Lie With Me by Sabine Durrant

The truth is, we all tell lies. A few lies never hurt anyone right?

Wrong!

Paul Morris has a plan. It starts with hiding or exaggerating a few things here and there. Paul is actually broke and has just been evicted from his rented flat and now resides with his mother. Twenty years ago, he wrote a novel which received some critical acclaim but none of his subsequent works have been published since.

Paul Morris meets an old university friend, Andrew, by chance in an old bookstore in London. They exchange numbers and Andrew rings him a few weeks later to invite him to a dinner party where he meets the lovely Alice, a widowed human rights lawyer and mother of three teens. They strike up a relationship and eventually, after a seemingly smitten Alice had hinted initially at inviting Paul to her house in Greece for the annual group holiday but never followed up on it, Paul makes less than subtle hints about going along and is eventually formally invited by the whole group. He’s overjoyed as he is scheming to win the heart of Alice.

For Paul, getting to Greece has to be via a very economical route as he is almost broke. He makes it eventually but amidst a slew of lies.

Things get interesting once the group arrives in Pyros for holidays. It’s also a bittersweet time as Alice is still working with the parents of a girl Jasmine who disappeared 10 years earlier, who are also returning for a reinvigorated campaign into her whereabouts. Understandably the police are wary of Alice’s efforts, but when another young woman is raped, their attention is focused on the holidaymakers.

Lie With Me is a twisty claustrophobic read with a lead character that you won’t like. It is a sizzling psychological thriller of deceit, betrayal and entrapment that is extraordinarily well-crafted and utterly gripping. As you read, you develop a growing sense of foreboding until the unexpected, final twist.