Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Title: Listen for the Lie
Author: Amy Tintera
Publication: Macmillan, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Mystery
Setting: United States

Description: Five years ago, Lucy was married and living in her Texas home town with a handsome husband, dream house, and her best friend, Savannah, not far away. Everything changed after a terrible night that began with a friend’s wedding and ended with Lucy found wandering around, covered in Savannah’s blood, and Savannah dead. Although Lucy has no memory of the fatal night, everyone, including her own parents, assumes she murdered Savannah, although there is insufficient evidence for her to be charged. Despised and lonely, she moved to Los Angeles and tried to rebuild her life. Now Ben Owens, host of a popular podcast, Listen for the Lie, has come to Texas to investigate the unsolved murder. His revelations expose the fragility of Lucy’s existence: she loses her job and her admittedly unsatisfactory boyfriend can’t look her in the eye. Her grandmother begs her to return to Texas but, once Lucy is back, she can’t escape from old friends skeptical about her memory loss claims and Ben Owens, who says he wants to find the truth but assumes she is a criminal. Lucy makes what could be a dreadful decision: to cooperate with Ben to discover the truth, even if prejudicial to her.

My Impression: I know that true crime podcasts are very popular and judging by the obsession with the Karen Read trial, taking place less than ten minutes away, it is easy to understand how a community becomes fascinated with the murder of someone well-known (and sometimes well-liked). However, I don’t think I care for this sub-genre of book in which an old crime is being revisited by a podcast, although it is essentially an investigation of a cold case and authors such as Michael Connelly are gifted in such depictions. One of the differences is that while the podcaster describes himself as nobly seeking the truth, he is usually seeking fame and fortune and enjoys stirring up old misery because it might lead to sensational discoveries that increase his audience. There are no professional rules guiding his (or her) behavior; for instance, a prohibition on sleeping with the suspect (s), although that particular shibboleth is sometimes violated by the police as well.

In this book, people doubt the protagonist’s claim that she remembers nothing of the night when her friend was murdered after arriving at the wedding. From the reader’s perspective, that makes her an unreliable narrator (another favorite trope these days), made more complicated by the insistent voice in Lucy’s head that gruesomely tells her how she could accomplish murders of the many insensitive people with whom she interacts. She also sees the shade of her deceased friend periodically so appears to be talking to herself, which increases the wariness with which she is regarded. As in many such books, everyone involved is lying about something. If you are the type of reader who wants to figure out what really happened before it is revealed, that is not easy.

Coincidentally, I read another podcast/cold crime book this month: Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French. Here, the story is told from the perspective of the missing woman’s daughter but she is not a suspect. The podcaster is the son of a neighbor assumed to have murdered Charlotte then committed suicide, but his commercial goals make the alleged search for the truth less plausible. The original investigation went nowhere but a present-day murder gets the police involved and I found the section about London detective inspector sent to take over the investigation more interesting than the two families involved in the tragedy.

Another book in this subgenre I read fairly recently was The Lost Girls by Jessica Chiarella, in which the protagonist is a podcaster haunted by the disappearance of her older sister when she was just eight. The suggestion of a link between a recent disappearance and her sister’s sends her back to her home town to investigate. This did not live up to its hype but was perfectly readable. In contrast, I absolutely hated The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead, about a group of college girls seduced by a parent into obsessive bondage. One of the survivors leaves her marriage and gets involved with an old friend turned “true-crime podcast crusader” – another of these people who does not maintain ethical boundaries with witness/interviewees. I only went on reading this improbable but surprisingly well-reviewed book (in which the heroine repeatedly risks her life going undercover at secret, violent sex clubs and there are many other disturbing incidents) because I was waiting for a bus with nothing else available. I would not advise purchasing any of these four when there are so many better books out there waiting for attention but the Nicci French book was the best of the group. I liked her detective who was juggling domestic angst while trying to conduct an investigation and hope another book about her is forthcoming.

Do you listen to podcasts?  I have never listened to an entire podcast. The two I tried (both about books) started out interesting but I got bored. I suppose if I had tried them when I doing something, I might have persevered but in general I’d rather listen an audiobook. 

Source: Library. This is my twelfth book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.