The Perfect Liar

October 15, 2018

Widowed Susannah and her teenage son Freddy are living a seemingly perfect life. Her marriage to Max, an acclaimed artist, speaker, and professor, has taken them from New York City to a quiet university town in Vermont. However, both Max and Susannah harbor their own secrets, which could ruin their marriage and the life they've built together. The first warning comes in the form of a note Susannah finds taped on their door, stating, "I know who you are." As Max and Susannah try to decipher the meaning, more messages follow, and mysterious accidents occur around them, raising suspicions even higher. Greene (The Headmaster's Wife) returns with a psychological novel that will keep readers riveted. Told in alternating perspectives between Max and Susannah, it considers mental illness and fear, and a sense of panic sets the pace, as Susannah suspects Max of lying to her, while he remains dismissive. VERDICT For fans of twisty stories and domestic suspense, this novel creates a slow burn with not one but two shocking climaxes, causing readers to wonder who is safe.--Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2018
Greene, author of five previous novels, including the best-selling The Headmaster's Wife (2014), returns with another high-stakes puzzler. For both the protagonists and the reader, the trick is to figure out just who is the perfect liar. Greene leads readers (and his protagonists) down some very twisty avenues of reasoning that abruptly end. He begins with a depiction of a seemingly perfect couple but introduces a tinge of dependency and anxiety on the wife's part that later amps up the tension. Widow Susannah has married Max, whose innovative art work has landed him a faculty position at a small university in Vermont. Cue to-die-for house in idyllic setting?disrupted by a note on the door that says, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Then a colleague of Max's comes to dinner and turns up dead the next day, and another accusatory note is left on the couple's front door. The steadily shocking tone could be more varied, but this stands as an absorbing mystery about who is predator and who is prey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)