To Love a Liar by L.V. Matthews – Book review

To Love a Liar by L.V. Matthews was my third (and final!) holiday read. (If you’re interested, the other two were Medusa and The Sleepwalkers – both also brilliant.) Sometimes you just need a good-old thriller to really sink your teeth into and that’s exactly what To Love a Liar is.

Opening sentence: They have come to the loch, where it is quiet, where it is wild.

Who can you trust?

The liar of the title is Chris Fletcher. He has found himself back in the UK after years of living in Sardinia with his wife, nurse and poet, Jill. And the lying in this instance refers to his double life. You see, Chris is a police officer, working in a department that goes undercover. His job is to create a whole new identity for himself and infiltrate any situations or organisations that the police need more information on.

As you would expect, the nature of this means he lives a secretive life, keeping the real detail of what he gets up to from everyone except his boss, Oliver. Even Jill is in the dark, which puts a huge strain on their marriage.

But what a life Chris has forced her to lead – she has given him so much of herself and he has always kept her at a distance.

When two of Chris’ past double lives come back to haunt him, there are dire consequences. In a worse-case-scenario for him, his very secret life is plunged into the public arena as new evidence about the death (19-years earlier) of a previous acquaintance, Sophia Roy means the internet has decided he might be responsible and the spotlight is suddenly on this very private man…

He’s a man used to violence, but against the power of the internet and this unbending campaign to crush him, he is powerless.

I liked how in the story structure, questions around the ethics of just how far these policemen go to lead double lives is debated through spliced quotes from a TV show about undercover police and other people who have been affected.

Fast-paced and with gasp moments, To Love a Liar was perfect escapism thriller that asked some thoughtful questions on the ethics of undercover police work. Not a theme I’d read about in great depth before, so interesting for me from that POV too.

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