The Liar's Girl

Starred review from December 11, 2017
Alison Smith, the narrator of this exceptional thriller from Irish author Howard (Distress Signals), is a student at St. John’s College in Dublin. After a friend of Alison’s becomes the latest victim of a serial killer who knocks women on the head and drowns them in Dublin’s Grand Canal, Alison’s boyfriend, 19-year-old Will Hurley, confesses to the crimes. Alison flees to the Netherlands to escape the shame she feels over not knowing the “true” Will. Ten years later, two women are found in the Grand Canal, killed in the very same way as those before. At the request of two detectives, Alison reluctantly returns to Dublin, where the imprisoned Will claims to have information pertaining to the murders that he will tell only her. Thrust back into the nightmare of her past, Alison assists the police in their effort to uncover whether a copycat killer is at work—or whether Will was unjustly convicted. Howard keeps the reader turning the pages right through to the shocking and satisfying resolution. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.).

February 1, 2018
Ten years earlier Alison Smith, a first-year student at St. John's College in Dublin, fled her past for a new life in the Netherlands. Five young Dublin women had been murdered, with their bodies found in the Grand Canal, the last of them being Alison's best friend from childhood, Liz. When Will Hurley, Alison's first real boyfriend and inseparable companion for months, confessed to being the Canal Killer, Alison desperately needed to escape the label of the girlfriend who suspected nothing. But when apparent copycat murders begin again in Dublin, and police want assistance from Will (who's confined to a psychiatric hospital), they need Alison's help, for Will refuses to talk to anyone but her. Alison reluctantly gives up her anonymity when she returns to Ireland, assuaging guilt about giving testimony that incriminated Will by turning investigator as she tries to sort through her emotions and revisit her complex relationship with Liz. Howard (Distress Signals, 2017) toggles smoothly between past and present, and between Alison and the perpetrator, revealing the extent of the lies only in the final pages. Another impressive writer to watch in the thriller genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)