Let Me Lie was maybe not as emotionally compelling as the previous two books by this author, but it was very engrossing. As often when I'm reading books with a twist, I spend a lot of the reading journey with my detective head on, determined to figure out what's going on before all is revealed...

Let Me Lie is the story of Anna, a new mother struggling with the suicides of both her parents in the last couple of years. On the anniversary of her mother's death, Anna receives an unexpected communication which puts all she believes into question.

I've given this a 4 star rating, it's intensely intriguing and readable but without quite the same emotional resonance as I Let You Go, or the claustrophobic tension of the scenes in I See You.

I am a big fan of Claire Mackintosh's other books so I was really excited to give this a go. True to form, there are multiple twists in the book and it is impossible to guess what is going to happen. I read Let Me Lie in a really short space of time because it is a really gripping novel.

Let Me Lie combines a psychological thriller with a bit of hands on investigation, and the result is an entertaining page turner that will make you chuckle with glee as you figure out the what, but lets you wonder about the why and the how until the very end.

One would expect to bond with Anna the most, as it's her story. But then enters Murray Mackenzie, retired detective, and together with his intuitive wife Sarah, who acts like a backseat Poirot, they steal the show. He has no reason to take Anna's somewhat fantastical sounding case upon himself, apart from maybe slight boredom, but once on it, he's relentless.

Even though it's quite a short book, we get a glimpse into the lives of not only Anna and her family as they struggle with grief, and mundane things like keeping a family business afloat, but also Murray, and how his life is affected by Sarah's mental illness. I'm not sure where my fascination with ordinary people comes from, but I'm always happy to come across a story that explores the normal and relatable side of things in the midst of chaos.

If you enjoy light suspense, and a lot of personal drama and tension, Let Me Lie will surely satisfy your cravings.

Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh

One year ago Caroline Johnson jumped to her death off Beachy Head, just a few months after her husband Tom did exactly the same thing. This is almost more than their daughter Anna can bear. Anna is herself the mother of a small baby, a child that her parents never knew. In an irony that isn’t lost on Anna, her partner is the therapist who tried to help her through her grief. Without her parents’ deaths, she would never have met him and she wouldn’t have her beautiful child, but there is a hole in Anna’s life that is filled with grief and questions. Why did her mother kill herself when she knew so well how the suicide of her husband had affected them all? It doesn’t feel right. And when one day Anna receives a disturbing message, she begins to think that maybe it actually wasn’t right. That perhaps her parents were murdered.

It’s unlikely that the police would be interested in Anna’s claims but luckily for her she comes across retired detective Murray who is passing his time helping out the police as a civilian. There’s something about Anna’s claims that catches his attention and the more he learns, the more he’s inclined to believe her. He has another voice in his ear encouraging him – Murray’s wife Sarah, a woman who fills Murray’s life with worry but so much love.

Clare Mackintosh is the master of the twisty thriller – the brilliant I Let You Go is one of the most memorable thrillers I’ve read – and so I couldn’t wait to read Let Me Lie. Let Me Lie is another very twisty tale, and, as you’d expect from a Clare Mackintosh novel, the shocks come thick and fast. This is not an author who likes the reader to feel complacent and settled!

Surprisingly, though, I enjoyed Let Me Lie most of all not for its main story and its surprises, but for its truly wonderful portrayal of Murray and Sarah. I absolutely loved these characters. They are drawn with such tenderness and care and learning about their lives together was, with no doubt at all, the most appealing aspect of the entire book for me. The twists became almost an irrelevance when placed against such beautiful storytelling.

The author’s novels are inevitably going to be compared with I Let You Go which, in my eyes, is a masterpiece of the genre. I did feel that Let Me Lie suffered with the comparison, largely because I guessed the twists in the plot and I had a pretty good idea very early on how things were going to develop. I do, of course, read a lot of crime fiction and psychological thrillers (largely thanks to I Let You Go) and so I’m pretty good at spotting things these days. Also I didn’t especially care for Anna and the other characters in her family and life. But I suspect that many readers will love this twisty tale.

However, the Murray and Sarah story means that I hung on to every word of their lives and it’s these two that I’ll remember, proving once more what a wonderful writer and storyteller Clare Mackintosh is, especially when freed of the requirement for the obligatory twist.

Other reviews
I Let You Go
I See You

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Anna is struggling with grief after the death of her parents. First her Dad commits suicide and then her mum does the same. On the anniversary of her death a card arrives that makes Anna doubt everything.

After the success of the first of Clare’s books I was so excited to read this and for me I struggled. It was slow paced and I wasn’t enjoying it. I put it to one side and then went back to it and I am so glad I did. I started to really enjoy it and the pace quickened and it’s full off twists and then the sucker punch. Brilliant

Anna Johnson is still trying to come to terms with death of her Mother twelve months on from her shocking suicide, when she receives an anonymous note that makes her question her Mother’s passing.

She has never fully believed that her Mother would commit suicide, particularly not after Anna’s Father did the same. Both of Anna’s parents plummeted to their deaths from the infamous suicide spot, Beachy Head.

But could it be that they were murdered?

Anna has always wondered.

The arrival of the anonymous note prompts her to do something about it. Retired Detective Murray Mackenzie is on the reception of the local Police station when Anna finally plucks up the courage to report the suspected crime.

Murray is usually a stickler for rules, as he is no longer a serving detective he should pass the note and the information that Anna has given him on to his serving colleagues.

But there is something in Anna’s story that brings the detective in him back to life and he decides to keep the information to himself so that he can begin his own investigation. What they go on to discover is something that can’t be reviewed for fear of giving too much away!

I didn’t think that Clare Mackintosh could top her first two books, but somehow she has managed it. Let Me Lie is so cleverly plotted that every time I thought I knew what was happening I was thrown in another direction entirely. Another masterpiece by this author!

Anna Johnson lives in Cleveland Avenue, the house where she grew up in her happy family, just her, her mother and father. But all that has changed. Anna now lives in the house with her partner Mark, a grief therapist and her baby daughter Ella her mother and father having both committed suicide, jumping from Beachy Head within six months of each other.

Anna is getting used to being a new mother to baby Ella when on the first anniversary of her mother’s death she receives a disturbing anonymous letter that makes her question whether her death was suicide after all. Taking the letter to the police she meets the wonderful Murray Mackenzie, a former detective but one who’s employed as a civilian who works on the front desk at Lower Meads police station. Let me just say this book would not have been half as captivating without Murray and his back-story. Anyway, Murray decides to take up the challenge and looks into the deaths of both Anna’s parents.

This is a slow build novel, enjoy the calm while part one unfolds because all of that will soon change. As is common in this genre, the story is told from multiple viewpoints and part one concentrates on the lead up to the suicides. The day Anna found out her father was missing through her meeting of Mark, taking in the Chaplain that had tried to dissuade Caroline away from the cliff edge via the impact on Billy Johnson, her father’s brother and owner of the car dealership that Anna is now a co-owner of. All of this is background and a chance for the reader to put their own stake in the ground on whether someone is messing with Anna or was foul play involved.

I love books with twists and turns, and Clare Mackintosh delivers plenty, so many that at times she could have made me believe up was down. The book, given the subject of suicide, necessarily focusses on Anna reassessing the people that she thought she knew best, her parents, and putting what she knew into context with the memories she’d held so dear. She’s a young woman who has gone through turmoil over the last year and a half which means that those around her tend to treat her with care but her mother’s Goddaughter Laura has decided that the time has come for Anna to start tackling the outstanding paperwork. Will she come across more secrets?
This book is entirely built around secrets and lies – some were hiding in plain sight, other’s less so and the excerpts from an unknown writer only serve to remind the reader that no-one is to be trusted. Of course this means that you distrust everyone more or less from the start and oh my goodness that gives a lot of doubt for one novel!

I did enjoy this latest offering from someone who I consider one of the top writers in this genre. I needed to know what was true, and this is an author who isn’t so determined to keep us spinning that she forgets the link she has forged for us to the characters which means that there are some emotional moments to go with the draw-dropping twists.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Little Brown Book Group who kindly allowed me to read a copy of Let Me Lie prior to publication today, 8 March 2018. This unbiased review is my thanks to them, and the mistress of the twist, Clare Mackintosh.

I was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and independent review.
This is the third book that I have read by Clare Mackintosh and I really enjoyed it.
A cleverly written, exciting, fast paced psychological thriller which kept me intrigued from the very start. Interesting characters, lots of twists and turns all contributed to making this a book worth reading.
4.5****

Anna Johnson lost both her parents. Less than two years ago, her father walked to the edge of a cliff and jumped into the sea. A year ago, her mother did exactly the same thing. And Anna never knew why…
Now, with a young child and a loving partner, Anna is still struggling to come to terms with the tragedy. But her world begins to fall apart when she receives an anonymous note:
“Suicide? Think again.”
That note starts an obsession with finding out the truth. But some truths really should stay buried…
Let Me Lie is the third novel by Clare Mackintosh. As regular readers to the blog know, my reading oscillates between the classic Golden Age crime novel and the modern day mystery-thriller genre. After all, that’s kind of the point of the blog, to find the classic-style mystery in modern crime fiction. I’ve come across Clare Mackintosh’s name before – I’ve even got a charity shop copy of I Let You Go, her first book, unread on my shelf – but, and I’ll be honest here, I was a bit put off by the quotes on the blurb. Apart from the first two that banged on about an amazing twist – you know, the thing that you’re better off not knowing the existence of – there were fourteen other authors going on about the book being the next best thing to sliced bread – no, I’ll take that back. The next best thing to the Reese’s peanut butter chocolate egg that I had the other day. Seriously amazing, but now it’s vanished from the shops like it never existed. Anyway, generally, when I’ve seen that many glowing reviews, it hasn’t ended well, like in The Girl On The Sodding Train.
So I approached this one tentatively…
… and all of the praise lavished on this one – there are fourteen quotes on the Amazon page – well, in my opinion, they’re understating this book. It is magnificent.
I’m going to say very little about the plot. The book is structured with at least three points of view, two known – Anna and the retired policeman she recruits to help her – and the rest unknown, those people drip-feeding hints as to who they might or might not be. All of the voices are wonderfully distinct and the end of one strand of the narrative almost had me in tears. There is some gorgeous narrative trickery involved here, something that I’d love to tell you about but simply can’t, and at least two revelations that completely floored me. I don’t know about Clare’s first book, but this isn’t structured around a massive central twist – there’s so much more to this.
This is probably the most satisfying crime novel that I’ve read in a long time – clever, moving and it out-smarted me completely. Highly Recommended, in case you couldn’t guess.
Let Me Lie is released today in the UK. Many thanks to Sphere for the review copy.

I read relatively few thrillers, psychological or otherwise, these days – but if there’s one author who will always be able to lure me back to the dark side it’s Clare Mackintosh. I loved I Let You Go, not for its big twist but for what came afterwards: I liked I See You even more, and still shiver at the thought of it every time I travel on the underground. So, has Clare Mackintosh done it again?

I raced through the first half of this book – I forced myself to put it down when I noticed the clock creeping towards 3am. By that point, I had 15 different theories of my own about how this book was going to turn out, had identified at least half a dozen people I thought were distinctly suspect, and had firmly decided that I loved retired police officer Murray – who agrees to investigate the closed case – and his relationship with his troubled wife.

The following night I read to the finish, pages turning faster and faster… and I am, of course, going to tell you nothing about the story. But there’s not just one jaw-dropping twist in this book, there’s a whole series of them – a very clever dance with smoke and mirrors, and an explosive climax that won’t disappoint anyone. I very much liked the structure of this book, told mainly from the viewpoints of Anna and Murray – with other short chapters from an intriguing third person, gradually revealed. The writing is as excellent as always – I particularly liked the strong sense of place, the relationships between the characters.

So has Clare Mackintosh done it again? I think I have to say yes, she probably has. Or then again, for me, maybe not quite. My reservations aren’t around the pacing – it is maybe a little slow at times, but for building tension and understanding the characters that’s just fine – or the multiple twists of the story. It’s just that I perhaps wasn’t as engaged by the story of Anna as I felt I really should have been – it was Murray who constantly drew my eye, his was the story that engaged me emotionally, and his is the story that will linger longest in my memory.

Having loved Clare Macintosh's first two books, I was delighted to receive an arc of this book, thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher. This book is a cracker, plenty of twists and turns and shocks in store! Poor Anna lost both her parents to suicide and was struggling to cope with this at the same time as caring for a new baby. She receives information that things might not be what they seem regarding her parents' deaths and she wants the police to reopen their investigation. I loved the character of Murray, the retired policeman working on desk duty who becomes embroiled in the case.
Very cleverly written, this is a fantastic book. Also quite sad at times. I would certainly recommend all of this author's books.

Let Me Lie was the first book I have read by Clare Mackintosh and I am as yet unsure what I thought about it. I enjoyed reading it and it kept me interested at the time, but it left no lasting impression on me.

Anna is at home with her 8- week- old daughter Ella when she receives a card through the post. Today isn’t just any day, it is the anniversary of her mother’s suicide, just seven months after her dad had also committed suicide.

Still reeling from their unexpected death of both her parents Anna is shocked to receive a card that reads ‘Happy Anniversary’ on the outside and ‘Suicide? Think again’ on the inside.

Anna has always found the circumstances surrounding her parent’s death suspicious and now begins to believe they were murdered and goes to the police with her suspicions but in doing so puts herself and her family in danger.

Nineteen months earlier Anna’s father had driven one of his company’s cars from Eastbourne to Beachy Head and, threw himself off a cliff. Seven months later her mother had followed him. Anna has no idea why when neither of her parents had previously suffered from anxiety or depression.

“The facts were unarguable. Except that my parents were not suicidal, they were not depressed, anxious, fearful. They were the last people you would expect to give up on life.”

One of the things I disliked about this book was the circumstances under which Anna met her husband Mark. Mark was her grief counsellor after her parents died and four sessions in he stopped and said he couldn’t treat her anymore.

“He said there was a conflict of interest, and this was terribly unprofessional, but would I like to have dinner some time.”

As a former counsellor this is one of the fundamental principles, you don’t have a relationship with clients or former clients it is highly unethical. He did the right thing in not continuing the sessions, but it still affected the way I saw him as a character.

One thing I did like about Let Me Lie was the way the author sensitively handled the feelings and emotions that someone grieving a death by suicide of both her parents could legitimately feel.

“Harder than coming to terms with my dad’s suicide was what happened next. Trying to fathom why – after experiencing first hand the pain of bereavement by suicide; of watching me cry for my beloved father- my mother would knowingly put me through it again.”

Whilst I found Anna’s story interesting to read I found Murray’s story much more interesting. Murray is the retired police officer who decides to help Anna look into her parent’s deaths.

Murray doesn’t believe it was murder necessarily, but he does agree that something doesn’t seem right. Murray understands a little of how Anna feels as his wife Sarah has borderline personality disorder and has made multiple suicide attempts over the years.

The parts of Let Me Lie dealing with Murray and Sarah were my favourite bits.

Let Me Lie had some good twists in it and was worth reading but not necessarily among my favourite books so far this year. It was entertaining but there was no wow factor for me.

The queen of misdirection is back with yet another brilliant thriller. Each time I start a new book by this amazing author I read with trepidation, surely she can't keep getting better but within a few chapters she drawing me and tying me in plot twists.
Definitely my recommended must read author for any and all fans of crime fiction.

Let Me Lie is another book by Clare Mackintosh that is hard to describe because one wrong word and you let out a plot twist – and possibly spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it.

It starts with Anna, home with her eight year old daughter Ella and mourning the loss of her mother a year earlier and her father seven months before that. Both committed suicide, jumping off the cliffs at Beachy Head.

Or, at least the police and coroner say they committed suicide; Anna isn’t so sure and, when a card telling her to think again turns up on her doorstep, she becomes convinced her parents were murdered. Now, to persuade the police.

Enter Murray, a retired police officer who now works as a civilian. When Anna turns up at the station, upset and scared, he decides to look into her parents deaths and see if there is any truth in what she says. What he finds is not just the truth but a whole world of lies that puts Anna and Ella in danger.

Of all the characters in this book, Murray was my favourite. He is so well drawn, so warm and welcoming and just a little bit sad, taking care of his wife who has severe mental health problems and unsure of his place in the world now that he’s retired.

I looked forward to the chapters where he was front and centre, which alternating with Anna’s, wanting to know how his story played out beyond the mystery of Anna’s parents. It is one of the things I like about Mackintosh’s novels – her ability to make you believe in her characters, even if you have to suspend belief a little bit when the plot gets a bit silly, which it did a couple of times here I have to admit.

Anna was harder to like. I could understand how and why she behaved but I found it hard to believe how naive she was at times. That’s an ongoing issue with me in this genre so nothing against Mackintosh. I know it’s needed for the plot but I can’t help but get a bit wound up by it and. To give Mackintosh her due though, she does seem to play with the genre “standards” here, making me think the story was going in one direction when it was actually going in another.

There is a nice balance between Murray and Anna’s voices, plus another which helps slowly bring out the secrets her parents were hiding. I do love a book with secrets, and here Mackintosh is in a league of her own. This is her third book and the third I’ve read and each one has had a twist that has made me realise I was reading the book one way when it was actually telling me a different story if I’d just been looking closely enough.

It’s why her first book is still one of my favourite books and one I still flash back to and why I am a firm fan, one who is looking forward to her next book already. Loved this!

I feel a bit sorry for Clare Mackintosh. As the queen of the knock-you-of-your-seat killer twist, she has a LOT of expectation on her shoulders from readers. I was both excited and nervous going into Let Me lie - one of my most anticipated books this year, I really hoped I'd love it as much as I did her previous two.

Let Me Lie tells the story of Anna, a new mum who's still recovering from the traumatic deaths of her parents- both of whom appeared to commit suicide seven months apart. But when an anonymous card comes through the post, Anna becomes obsessed with the idea that there was more to her parents deaths - the trouble is she's having a hard time convincing anyone else. And while she's desperately trying to work out what happened, someone else seems intent on making sure she doesn't.

I can only begin to imagine how traumatic it must be to loose a parent to suicide, but Anna's double trauma really got to me. Her grief and incomprehension was tangible and I was emotionally invested in this book, and Anna as a character right from the start. When events start happening to cause Anna to question the verdict on her parent's deaths, a tense atmosphere of doubt is created, causing me to suspect several characters may not be all they seem - including Anna herself.

While the writing is suspenseful and emotionally involving, I did find it a bit slow going for a while. Then, about half way through, the pace quickens and I found myself gripped and ended up reading the book in one sitting. I came up with several theories and suspicions while reading this book, and was pretty much convinced I had sussed this one out. Yet true to form, Clare Mackintosh still had some majorly shocking twists up her sleeve, saving them to the very end and leaving me reeling as I read the final page!

Let Me Lie isn't my favourite book by this author, but it's a worthy follow up to her previous books and a very good domestic thriller at that. I thought I was going to be disappointed, that the twists were obvious and that the shocking reveal I'd hoped for wasn't going to come, but yet again the author didn't disappoint. I also think Mackintosh's ability to create vulnerability in her protagonists and draw empathy from the reader is second to none. I wasn't disappointed and Clare Mackintosh remains among the top of my must read authors from my favourite genre.

Claire Mackintosh is the queen of a twisty read and Let me Lie did not disappoint! There are three parts to the book and every one of the endings to them had me shook (as the kids say). The reveals just keep coming, before you've had chance to process one you are hit with another.

I was gripped from the start and can't wait for more from Clare Mackintosh.

I love this author but I couldn't fully get on board with this book. I'm not sure exactly what is was - the fact that I thought it was pretty straight forward, despite the twists, and that there wasn't any real mystery about the parents. The writing is as good as ever however, I just think this plot was too tricky to pull off and it was stranger than the real story on which it was based. Set in Eastbourne, there are no real places as such apart from Beachy Head but that's not why I didn't like the story. Books about mental health can be insightful, I just wasn't sure who I should care about here. I did like Murray and Sarah and their relationship though - that should have been a story unto its own.

It's been over a year since Anna's dad killed himself, and exactly 12 months since her mother followed in a shocking suicide that exactly matched her husband's. Now with a small baby, Anna is struggling to come to terms with the loss of her beloved parents. So when she receives an anonymous note suggesting that her mum's death wasn't suicide, she enlists the help of a retired police detective to help her investigate. Ex-cop Mackintosh is always particularly successful at writing her police characters, and Murray is by far the strongest and most likeable character here.

I absolutely loved Clare Mackintosh's hugely successful debut novel, I Let You Go, but was a little underwhelmed by the follow-up, I See You, which had a great premise and engaging characters let down by a disappointing and far-fetched ending. I'm glad to say that Let Me Lie is a return to form, with more twists than a rollercoaster and a plot that kept me continually guessing.

When I heard that Clare Mackintosh had a new book coming out, I was really excited because in the past year I have become a big fan of this author after reading her first two novels, I Let You Go and I See You, so I would like to thank Little, Brown for providing me with an early copy of the book.

The protagonist of LET ME LIE is Anna Johnson, a twenty-six-year old new mum. She and her partner Mark have a six-week-old daughter, Ella, and they live in her parents’ house that she inherited after her parents died a year before. First her father jumped from a cliff and then, seven months later, her mother killed herself from that same cliff. Now, a year later, on the first anniversary of her mother’s death, Anna receives a card that questions her parents’ suicide. Anna’s always found strange that her parents had killed themselves and this card seems to confirm her doubts, so she turns to the police.

Murray Mackenzie is a retired detective who works in the reception of the police station. He decides to help Anna and to investigate her parents’ deaths not only because, like Anna, he thinks that they look suspicious, but also to escape from his difficult situation at home. His wife’s Sarah battles mental health and she spends most of her time in a mental hospital.

The story is told from the point of view of Anna, Murray, and another unidentified narrator. I loved the use of multiple narrators, especially the unidentified one, who I tried to guess who it was – but I figure it out almost at the end –, because it makes the novel more suspenseful and gripping. I kept reading and reading because I wanted to know what was going on with the other characters.

The characters of the novel are ordinary people with complicated family dynamics. Anna is still grieving her parents’ deaths and, as a new mother, she especially feels the absence of her mother who she wishes had been there through her pregnancy. The author created a well-developed character in Anna and described in details her emotions, her grief, her guilt for keeping things from her partner Mark, and her confused feelings when she finds out the truth. But my favorite character was Murray Mackenzie. He goes out of his way to find out the truth, even if he risks to lose his job over it. Murray is a good person, he is patient, determined and diligent. He is going through a lot in his personal life and all I wanted to do was to hug him.

LET ME LIE is full of crazy twists. Just when you think that you know what is going on, something else happens that surprises you and then there is a shocking ending that I really didn’t see coming. It’s an intense, thrilling, and unpredictable novel about dysfunctional families, secrets, suicide, and mental illness, and you won’t be able to put it down until the last page.

I have loved both of this authors previous books so was desperate to read this one as soon as I possibly could! Clare Mackintosh writes so beautifully that I would probably be just as happy reading her shopping list but once I got my hands on a copy of Let Me Lie, I wasn’t going to put it down until I had read every last word.

Anna was just the perfectly drawn heroine for me. Devastated by the suicides of both her parents within a very short time, she still lives in her old family home but now with her partner and young baby daughter. On the anniversary of her mother’s death she receives something that is about to make her question everything she thought she knew about her parents. Once Anna became convinced that her parents had been murdered then she really started to open up for me. The slow development of her convictions is built subtly until the whirlwind of those final few chapters. Her dogged determination to prove that her mum and dad didn’t commit suicide leads her to civilian police employee, retired detective Murray. Interestingly, I found his life an even more fascinating story to follow and I loved the relationship he had with his wife Sarah although it did make me feel quite sad in places. Murray was actually the stand out character for me here and it’s the appreciation of his involvement within the storyline that I will take away with me from Let Me Lie. I would definitely be interested in reading more about him in future books!

In usual Mackintosh style nothing is ever quite how it appears here and the twists came thick and fast, some I had already anticipated, others came as OMG moments that completely floored me. And that’s what I have come to love and expect from this author. Her ability to shock her readers, even those hardened twist addicts like myself, time and time again is a gift that just keeps on giving!

I really enjoyed Let Me Lie. It grabbed me round the throat and it didn’t let up the pressure until the very end. It was easily addictive, thoroughly entertaining and I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended by me!