Lie to Me

May 1, 1990
Like Elmore Leonard, Martin ( The Crying Heart Tattoo ) favors seamy-side life where evil is abrupt, foreordained, explicable and unforgivable. Phil Jameson, a nut case, waits in a Virginia woods holding the hand of the 15-year-old hitchhiker he picked up in Maryland. When influential real estate developer Jonathan Gaetan and his wife Mary leave, Philip breaks into their house ``to get what is his.'' Gradually, the reader catches on that the hitchhiker isn't there, just her hand is. The Gaetans return, and the next day Jonathan is found dead and sexually mutilated. Did Philip do it? Or Mary? Alone or in collusion? What connects Philip and the Gaetans, and, does Mary protect him because of the photos he stole from the house? Will Philip kidnap Penny, a child staying at the motel where he hides out, and if he does, will he harm her? Can deposed Detective Teddy Camel use this case to make a comeback? Only the last issue is a given in this violent, psychologically acute, grossly logical thriller with an amusing epilogue.

June 1, 1990
Certainly not for the squeamish, this taut, gripping, and bloody thriller details the mad ravings of a warped personality. After seven years in prison, Philip confronts someone from his past, tortures her wealthy husband, and demands money. The following day, when the woman reports her husband's gory "suicide," policeman Theodore Camel, astute but just marking time, suspects something more. As the plot alternates between the ex-con's depraved psychosexual fantasies and Camel's perserverance, tension takes hold, shaking the reader with the possible reality of it all. Scary.

Copyright 1990 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.