Lipstick and Lies by
Lesley Grant-Adamson
hbk out January 98
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
at £16.99
Grant-Adamson has few rivals when it comes to literate psychological suspense with that authentic tang of ambiguity. Anna, the narrator of Lipstick and Lies, was permanently scarred by a murder case in the 1950s: when she was eight, her mother was murdered and her mother’s lover was subsequently hanged for the crime. Forty-five years later, however, a lawyer investigating miscarriages of justice stirs up her memories of her lonely childhood. In those memories lie the key to what really happened. And there are others with contributions to make, notably Anna’s recently-deceased father, a man bearing profound psychological scars from the war, and a sinister childhood friend.
Grant-Adamson explores the changing perspectives of past and present, childhood and adulthood, memory and truth. And she does so in a way that is enormously readable and full of dark suspense.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Lipstick and Lies by
Lesley Grant-Adamson