Liar's Girl

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Catherine Ryan Howard: Liar's Girl (2018, Atlantic Books, Limited)

English language

Published Sept. 10, 2018 by Atlantic Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-78239-898-1
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4 stars (1 review)

Will Hurley was an attractive, charming, and impressive student at Dublin's elite St. John's College--and Ireland's most prolific serial killer. He stalked and drowned his five young victims in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal, and is currently serving a life sentence in the city's Central Psychiatric Hospital. Alison Smith's world imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the victim of the Canal Killer--and then her boyfriend Will confessed. Alison fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back. When a young woman's body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to confess--but there's only one person he's prepared to confess it to. Reluctantly Alison is pulled back into the past she's worked so hard to leave behind, only …

6 editions

Twisty plot, somewhat interesting viewpoint.

4 stars

The plot is very much a whodunnit (or whodunwhat), and keeps the reader guessing to the end.

The viewpoint of the protagonist, namely "serial killer's girlfriend" is unusual for a police procedural.

I wasn't completely convinced by the characters. At one point I found my self agreeing with the protagonist's mother that she should just get over her trauma. That's not fair of either of us, but I think the failure of empathy is not all mine.

The setting is modern Dublin, which feels a bit like any modern north-western european city: trendy cafes, expensive to live in.

Subjects

  • Fiction, psychological
  • Fiction, thrillers, general
  • Fiction, women
  • Fiction, romance, suspense
  • Crime, fiction
  • Young women, fiction
  • Ireland, fiction