Never Tell a Lie by Hallie Ephron

Never Tell A Lie by Hallie Ephron

SUMMARY:

It all started with the yard sale. Ivy was eight months and one week pregnant when she insisted that she and her husband, David, clean out the junk they’d inherited with the old Victorian house they’d bought three years before. Call it nesting, call it nerves—she just wanted it all gone: the old electrical fixtures, the boxes of National Geographics from the 1960s, the four black wool greatcoats.

Neither she nor David recognized the woman at first. But it turned out that the customer asking about the lime-green glass swan dish—the woman who looks just about as pregnant as Ivy—was none other than Melinda White, a former high school classmate of David and Ivy’s. When Melinda was a child she used to play in their new house, she explained. It looked like they’d been doing some work. Would it be all right if she took a look around? David took Melinda inside. And she never came out.

Now David’s under police suspicion, and Ivy finds herself digging deep into the past to clear his name. But David’s history, she begins to discover, is not necessarily the history she remembers, and before long Ivy has uncovered a twisted web of deceit, betrayal, and lies, both the ones we tell those we love and the ones we tell ourselves. . . .

Relentlessly fast-paced and disturbingly creepy, Never Tell a Lie is a page-turning thrill ride about how well we know the people we love, and how far we are willing to go to protect the secrets of our past.

Ivy and David Rose are living an idyllic suburban life when their peace is shattered by missing person case that directly relates to them. A former high school classmate goes missing after last being seen at the Rose’s yard sale. When evidence pointing to Ivy and David’s guilt turns up on their property, they are immediately labeled the prime suspects. The book moves at breathtaking speed and no part of the story feels like filler. Every moment counts and Hallie Ephron is a master at pacing. Ephron literally wrote the book on mystery writing and therefore set herself up to be torn apart by critics. Luckily, she knows her genre and has written a great mystery that will have fans of Mary Higgins Clark and Phyllis Whitney looking forward to her next thrill ride. Ephron should have no problem building a strong fan base and a long and enduring career as a mystery novelist. The character of the happily married and pregnant Ivy Rose was realistic and sympathetic, not flat as can often be the case when an author is merely using his or her characters to give readers pieces to a puzzle. NEVER TELL A LIE is suspenseful and surprising with great dialogue.