This Is How I Lied

March 23, 2020
Early in this suspenseful psychological thriller from bestseller Gudenkauf (Before She Was Found), Det. Maggie Kennedy-O’Keefe of the Grotto, Iowa, PD is assigned to a cold case, the murder of her 16-year-old best friend, Eve Knox, after two kids find a new piece of evidence, Eve’s boot, in the cave where Maggie found Eve’s body 25 years earlier. Maggie’s job is to inform the Knox family, review the case files, gather all the evidence, and send it to the state lab for testing. She speaks to Eve’s mentally unstable sister, the sister’s abusive boyfriend, a pedophile neighbor, and her own father, the former Grotto PD police chief, who suffers from dementia. To complicate matters, Maggie is eight months pregnant and fatigued. When she receives threatening phone calls, and the barn on her property is torched, it becomes clear this small town is filled with secrets people want to keep buried. Maggie has to make one impossible choice after another as the action builds to a satisfying conclusion. Through alternating viewpoints Gudenkauf keeps the tension high throughout. Fans of dogged, resourceful female detectives will cheer Maggie every step of the way. Agent: Marianne Merola, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents.

April 1, 2020

Eve Knox's body was found in caves in Iowa when she was only 16, discovered by her best friend, Maggie, and Eve's sister, Nola. Twenty-five years later, both women are still haunted by that unsolved murder. Now seven months pregnant, Maggie is a police detective on the local police force where her father once tried to solve that case. When Eve's boot is discovered by a local boy, the new police chief hopes DNA results will help them uncover the truth. Maggie begs to work on the case, one that uncovers lies told 25 years earlier and involves a predator, abuse, a cover-up, blackmail, and false evidence. Someone was watching, and the tentacles of small-town secrets reach out now to touch neighbors, Maggie's husband and father, and Maggie herself. Nola, Maggie, and even Eve recall the earlier events in this troubling suspense novel. VERDICT Eve's own account foreshadows the disturbing revelations in the latest by the author of Before She Was Found. Fans of Lori Rader-Day's suspense novels featuring secretive women will appreciate this small-town nightmare. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/19.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

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