The entertainment world is stunned when famous comic Lenny Maxted commits suicide on an earl's estate. Lenny's fiancée, cocktail waitress Alice Conway, makes front-page headlines when she discovers his body. Traumatized by his inexplicable suicide and by her ill-considered marriage to a philandering photographer, Alice knows she must flee—to a place where the past can't hurt her and where nobody dies.
That is the first lie. Because there is no safe haven for Alice, who now lives on an isolated farm in Oxfordshire, haunted by vivid dreams of Lenny's corpse. Seven years after his death, an anonymous envelope arrives containing a newspaper article detailing the grisly discovery of human remains found in a car recently fished out of the bottom of a lake. Alice thinks she knows who the dead woman is. And then, out of the blue, Jack Flowers, the other half of the legendary Maxted and Flowers comedy team, shows up on her doorstep. Alice has not seen Jack since Lenny's funeral, but her surprise and pleasure turn to unease when she realizes that he is distressed, drinking heavily, and hiding her mail. Then she receives another anonymous clipping.... Someone is telling lies to Alice, playing with her mind until it is impossible to distinguish fact from falsehood. Someone who knows the truth about what really happened on a night six years ago...a monstrous secret that links a time, a place, and a group of friends and lovers. A secret that will put Alice in mortal danger.
Award-winning author Laura Wilson delivers a riveting tale of menace and mounting dread that will hold readers spellbound in its uneasy grip. Played out against a backdrop of illusive memory and human transgression, Telling Lies to Alice ratchets up the suspense one harrowing revelation at a time as it races to its catastrophic climax.
"An intricately structured suspense thriller... Ms. Wilson's masterly presentation...makes for compulsive reading."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"[A] deeply unsettling and cunningly written psychological thriller, sure to please fans of Barbara Vine or Minette Walters.... Compelling."
THE SEATTLE TIMES
"Delicate, merciless, psychological probing."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"A narrative relayed in the perfect pitch of a writer with pedigree goods to deliver."
THE LITERARY REVIEW (London)
"Scary and evocative... raises goose bumps in the most surprising places."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE BOOKS
