The Good Liar

He is no longer fifteen. Or fifty, or eighty for that matter. But your instincts never change. Once a charmer, ineffably attractive to the opposite sex, always a charmer. He could not help it even if he wanted to.

Outwardly, Roy and Betty appear like any other couple approaching their later years, but we soon discover – via a series of exceptional vignettes – that little in Roy’s life can be taken at face value.

A conman and expert liar, Roy has some a long way. A vicar’s son and former war-hero, his life has been building up to this, one final confidence trick and he has the potential victim lined up and ready, perhaps a little too ready. Layer upon layer of subterfuge develop as Roy’s life reveals itself piece by piece, taking the reader from wartime Berlin to New Labour Britain; all building to a moment where one false step may make this carefully constructed house of cards come crashing down.

Already shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger, Nicholas Searle’s The Good Liar is one of those pitch-perfect debuts, combining a keen eye for historical detail with a brilliantly-convincing and compulsive plot.

Searle – a pseudonymous civil servant, picked up by the same agent who represents John le Carré – clearly knows a thing or two about the secret state and this one of those novels which really provides an insider’s view on a clandestine world.

‘…This is a part-thriller, part-human condition novel that packs a tremendous punch.’ – The Financial Times