Bolstering the case that beach reads shouldn't be restricted to frothy romances and sudsy melodramas are novels like Claire Douglas's The Woman Who Lied, a consuming escapist thriller lubricated with secrets and lies.
One day, bestselling mystery writer Emilia Ward receives a curious package at the London home she shares with her husband and children; the parcel has no return address or stamp--it's been hand-delivered--and contains a broken-necked ceramic seagull. Emilia registers that Detective Inspector Miranda Moody, star of her popular mystery series, has a fear of seagulls. Some days later, Emilia finds a troll doll dangling from a tree on her property. Troll dolls were featured in her second DI Moody mystery. It's now clear to Emilia that someone is launching a scare campaign against her using motifs plucked from her book series. When something happens that's straight out of the final, forthcoming Moody book, which has been seen by only Emilia's publisher and inner circle, she realizes that someone close to her is behind the intimidation. After a member of her circle is murdered, Emilia fears she's next.
Douglas (Do Not Disturb; Then She Vanishes) executes her ingenious premise with such nimbleness that the book's unremarkable prose won't likely dampen the reading experience. Chapters from Emilia's perspective are braided with excerpts ostensibly from her mystery writing and, eventually, with chapters from another point of view entirely. Collectively, these strands harbor many intriguing possible answers to the question implicit in the book's title: Which woman is lying? --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer