‘Liars Island’ by T. Orr Munro

Published by HQ,
21 November 2024.
ISBN: 978-0-00864470-3 (HB)

Liars Island is the third novel in the CSI Ally Dymond series. Dymond appears a fairly complex character with a considerable back story (I haven’t read the first two books in the series so have pieced it together as perhaps you will have to), including adoptive parents, an abusive drunk ex-husband and a daughter (the result of a teenage pregnancy) who was almost the third female victim of a murdering paramedic. Dymond killed the paramedic (no spoiler here as she tells us early on), but this is known only to two other people and not to the police. As the novel starts she is waiting to hear if her application to rejoin the Major Investigations Unit has been successful whilst having suspicions that someone is trying to block it. Dymond’s career has suffered because she exposed corruption in the police force.

Kieran Deveney, a partner in a water sports centre on Liars Island off the Devon coast, is found dead in a remote cove. Before long two islanders both confess separately to the murder. They each claim they acted alone, and neither can be convicted as long as the other stands by their story. Dymond has her own reasons for not wanting to go to an island which she knew well in her childhood (these concern her adoptive father’s death – more back story), but she cannot avoid doing so for the demands of her professional life. When she arrives with a young and inexperienced colleague, Dymond finds a very close community of a handful of people, all of whom seem to have something in their lives that they wish to conceal (her junior colleague says at one point ‘It’s like everyone on the island is hiding a dirty little secret’). Dymond’s exposure to this group becomes intense as storms hit and she and her colleague cannot get off the island as planned. What was supposed to be a day trip stretches into considerably more than that.

Gradually we discover that the few people left on the island all have their reasons for killing Deveney as well as their reasons for not wanting to leave the island. This is skilfully done by the periodic appearance of crime scene examination reports and Facebook Messenger posts. There are also flashbacks in the voices of those remaining on the island, all of which end along the lines of ‘But he belonged here now. This is his home. He couldn’t leave Liars Island. Not now . . . Not ever.’

A closed community, then, made up of people who have every reason to avoid the scrutiny of those on the mainland in general and the police in particular. Another death muddies the waters, and during Dymond’s enforced sojourn she discovers more and realises the potential danger she and her colleague are in. The climax is dramatic, with the dreadful conditions and the sea playing their part. Dymond is helped by what she learned from her sailor father.

This is a very readable and atmospheric novel, with fully-drawn characters and a tight plot as well as more than passing nods to contemporary issues. Munro makes the most of the island and marine setting. The story works its way inexorably to a conclusion, and although by that time there are a limited number of suspects left, the ending is thoroughly convincing. The postscript is heart-warming, with some tensions released in Dymond’s relationships with her teenage daughter, her adoptive mother and a potential lover. I am very happy to recommend it.
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Reviewer: David Whittle

T. Orr Munro was born in Hampshire. After university she trained as a Crime Scene Investigator, then became a secondary School teacher. She changed career at 33 to become a police and rime journalist. She has since returned with her family to live in North Devon, the setting for the Ally Dymond series. Her time as a CSI provided much of the inspiration for the novels, shining a light on what happens behind the crime scene tape. 

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.