Wednesday 15 August 2018

All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson



Harry Ackerson is just about to graduate. After losing his mother to cancer as a teenager, he is hopeful that is father and stepmother will make it to the ceremony. Alice calls - they're not going to make it. Bill Ackerson has had an accident and died - can Harry come to Maine instead?

So it begins. Harry realises that he hardly knows Alice at all, but now they must be family to one another - or must they. In parallel, we jump back to Alice's past and find out more about her mother, her strange childhood and unique past. In alternate chapters, Harry is wondering if his father's death was an accident, and just who Grace McGowan is after she showed up at the funeral.

Peter Swanson is a master of the twist, and there are some good ones here. He also loves to pose interesting questions (like "ever thought of killing your spouse?" in The Kind Worth Killing) to his readers. Here the questions are "how much do you lie?" "to others?" and worse - "to yourself?"

It's dark, and won't be everyone's cup of tea. There are some sexual encounters that readers may be uncomfortable with, and towards the end, the body count escalates, but I enjoyed the intensity and tension, which was well crafted, and in my binge of unputdownable and twisty crime novels, this one ticked more than one box for me. 

Thoroughly enjoyed it.

5 stars

ISBN: 9780571327188

You may also enjoy The Kind Worth Killing or Her Every Fear by the same author, or what about The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham?

More books.

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