Lies She Told

July 31, 2017
Manhattan author Liza Cole, the protagonist of this engrossing psychological thriller from Holahan (The Widower’s Wife), is under pressure from her editor, Trevor, to write a romantic suspense novel that will get her back on the bestseller lists. In the past, Trevor has settled for a rough idea; now he wants an outline. On the personal side, Liza and her lawyer husband, David, are trying to conceive a baby, and their sex life has suffered. In addition, David’s best friend and law partner, Nick Landau, has been missing for a month and is almost certainly dead. Over the next month, as her deadline approaches, Liza draws on her suppressed emotions and memories to create the heroine of her new book, Beth, a young mother who suspects her husband of being unfaithful. Beth’s story line soon takes turns that echo sinister developments in Liza’s own life. Holahan keeps the suspense high by leaving it unclear who’s telling the truth and who’s lying until the surprising denouement. Agent: Paula Munier, Talcott Notch Literary

Starred review from July 1, 2017
Granted exactly one month to write her way back into her editor's good graces, a spinner of romantic suspense hatches a plot with unnerving echoes of her own troubled life.After the success years ago of Drowned Secrets, Liza Cole's career has been nothing but a cycle of diminishing returns, and now Trevor, her editor, summarily demands an outline of her latest project and gives her a deadline only a month away. It's not a recipe for reassurance, especially for an author who's as agitated about childbearing as she is about bringing her story to birth. David Jacobson, her husband of 12 years, hasn't been able to get her pregnant, and they've been led through an increasingly invasive and expensive set of procedures, their anxieties further ramped up by the month-old disappearance of Nick Landau, David's law partner and best friend. Beth, the heroine of Liza's new novel, has a 6-week-old baby, but that's about the only way her life marks any improvement on her creator's. Liza introduces her in the act of spotting her husband, Jake, a criminal prosecutor, sharing an intimate moment with sexy police officer Colleen Landry, and from that point on her life spirals further out of control, with stops along the way for a fling with Dr. Tyler Williams, the handsome psychiatrist Jake has arranged for her to see, and some deeply unwelcome revelations about her past from her old friend Christine. As the two plots unfold in alternate chapters, the parallels between them become more insistent and disturbing; Liza begins to hear Beth's voice advising her at moments of fateful decision; and both stories inevitably lead to murder. Holahan (The Widower's Wife, 2016, etc.) spins a suffocating double nightmare that provides compelling support for her heroine's rueful article of faith: "To be a writer is to be a life thief."

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