‘Then She Lied’ by Alice Leigh

Published by Canelo,
30 July 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-83598257-0 (PB)

The discovery of a body discovered in a pond on Long Island starts a chain of events that have their origin 20 years previously. At that time a young woman had walked into a police station. She was covered in blood and could not remember her name or anything of her past. Investigations failed at the time to find out more about her. She has since become established as a psychologist under the name of Dr Jane Dowson. She is in what seems to be an abusive and rapidly failing marriage to Caleb Jones, a celebrity chef. She still doesn’t know her true identity or recall her past, except for one event, but the recovery of the body starts to stir inchoate memories.

The chief police detective, Gail Miller, is also in a failing marriage and has the tragedy of losing a sister in her past. Her assistant, Detective Mark Winters, is a local and has very vivid memories of two young women disappearing at the time of Dowson’s blood-stained appearance. It has never been established what happened to them, although there have been reports of one living elsewhere. 

Dowson has been receiving threats that if she tells the police what little she recalls about one incident in her past, almost the only thing of which she believes she has a clear memory, she will regret it. Despite this, she decides she must go to the police. What she tells them causes ructions. Dowson claims that 20 years previously she saw Andrew Linebeck murder a young woman, and he knows that she saw it take place. The problem for the police is that Linebeck is the son of a former president who died in office: he is himself a successful man, a district attorney given to good works, particularly with the young, and who has an unblemished past. His only daughter (he also has two sons) is one of the missing girls from 20 years previously. Dowson believes Linebeck is sending the threats. She is attacked on more than one occasion, and her abusive husband comes under suspicion at one stage. A mental institution and its director become important. 

Meanwhile, the identity of the body pulled from the pond takes time to be established. It is assumed that it is either that of Holly Rose Dunn (Linebeck’s daughter) or Hanna McKinney, another local. As the investigation progresses, so many assumptions about Dowson, Linebeck and the police, amongst others, are questioned. Revelations about the past constantly alter perceptions. Resolution comes from an unexpected direction. 

This is an intricately-plotted and continually shifting novel. It holds attention and the reader soon learns not to trust more or less every character. The twists towards the end are convincing. There may be one or two things that I found perplexing (the police protection unit seems curiously incompetent, for instance, and something mentioned about Dowson’s early years is never further explained), but ‘Then She Lied’ is a story that will keep you entertained and on your toes. Is the title a clue? And who is ‘she’? You will have to read the novel to find out.
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Reviewer: David Whittle 

Alice Leigh is a novelist. She writes dark and twisty thrillers from her home in Cyprus. What I Told My Friends is her debut dark academia novel. Her latest book is Then She Lied. 

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.