No More Lies by Rachel Abbott
Abbott is an immensely popular writer of thrillers and has had great success with her series of novels featuring DCI Tom Douglas. The praise heaped on this novel as one of the very best thrillers of 2023 is hyperbolic; fellow writers, in particular, laud her combination of exciting plot twists and psychological drama.
Hmm … well this is a good story and can certainly be deemed a page turner. I did not think, however, that it was as spectacular as the responses set out in the book’s blurb suggested. For a start, it uses a narrative framework that has been presented before and more effectively by other writers. It’s that idea of a group of people who were once a close-knit band of friends in their youth but have now grown up and grown apart, and are forced to face up to the consequences of a guilty incident from their shared past. If you want to see this idea explored in a thrilling, psychologically acute book, try Barbara Vine’s ‘A Fatal Inversion’ from 1987. A more literary variation on this theme is Donna Tartt’s outstanding debut novel ‘The Secret History’.
Nevertheless, there are many pleasures to be gained from this novel and each one of the group of six former friends, outsiders at their school, are delineated with a plausible level of variety and authenticity. The most well developed, likeable member of this group and the character whose point of view is most frequently given to us by Abbott is Molly Hansen. She is one of those positive, attractive young women who seems to have her life under control without being too smug. Yet, at the very start of the novel, at her book club, she discovers something about her partner, Nathan, that throws her life upside down. He has been accused of something at work, where he is a senior and successful lawyer, that introduces a sense of suspicion into their relationship. Molly and Nathan were both part of the same friendship group at school and were probably the closest friends in that group. Yet, at that time, Molly had always resisted his overtures to take their relationship further because of his immature, casual attitude to a string of girlfriends. As Nathan matured he understood and was embarrassed by his previous behaviour and in the last few years they had turned their previous friendship into a close, loving relationship; or so Molly thought.
At the same time as this personal drama is unfolding a child abduction takes place and a young woman goes missing. This is when DCI Tom Douglas and his team of officers are introduced. There is plenty of back story, initially, about these characters that presumably picks up on developments from previous books in the series. However, whilst Douglas and his team are an appealing, humane group of investigators the focus remains on Molly, Nathan and their old school friends. This is because the police quickly establish a link between Nathan’s work issue, the missing baby and woman: it all comes back to the group and their former relationship as well as an incident that took place on the last big night together at their meeting place, a local wooded area.
Gradually, we find out about the other members of the group, how their lives have panned out and why the group fell apart so quickly after the events in the woods fifteen years previously. Molly and the police know that the secret of what is happening to them all now – each is being attacked in a precise, personal manner – can only be explained by delving back into the past.
Despite my sniffiness at the start of the review, this is a proper page turner and Abbott’s massive sales indicate that she knows how to put together an engrossing psychological thriller. I wanted a quick read that would enmesh me in its own world of secrets and twists and this book did just that. I think I saw the final twist when it came although that did not lessen my enjoyment as I had suspected several other characters at different stages of my reading – and that, of course, is one of the pleasures when reading such a book.