Trust Me When I Lie

by Benjamin Stevenson

Overview

"An outstanding debut—confident, compelling, with a surprise around every corner."—Jane Harper, New York Times bestselling author

With chilling twists, a morally complex lead, and a setting thick with secrets, this is true crime fiction for readers who crave ethical tension and endings that cut deep. Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Making a Murderer—because in this game, the story lies, the truth hides, and everyone plays dirty.

Jack Quick built his reputation on exposing the truth. His true crime docuseries shattered a broken justice system, gripped millions, and helped free a man convicted of murder. The headlines called it justice. The ratings called it a triumph. Jack called it storytelling.

But when another body turns up, everything unravels.

To find the truth, and his own redemption, Jack returns to the small vineyard town he made infamous. But revisiting the past means confronting a suspected killer and facing the darker possibility that he was never the hero of this story. The deeper he digs, the more tangled the truth becomes. And some stories, once told, can't be undone.

Gripping, morally layered, and razor-sharp, Trust Me When I Lie unspools a haunting mystery through the eyes of a man who manipulates truth for a living—and may have destroyed lives doing it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492691150
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

BENJAMIN STEVENSON is an award-winning stand-up comedian and author. He has sold out shows from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has appeared on The Comedy Central. Off-stage, Benjamin has worked for publishing houses and literary agencies in Australia and the US. He currently works with some of Australia’s best-loved authors at Curtis Brown Australia. Trust Me When I Lie is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

"An outstanding debut from an exceptional new talent, Trust Me When I Lie is an absorbing thriller told with heart and wit. Morality and ambition clash on a journey full of twists as Trust Me When I Lie takes readers from the cut-throat media landscape to a sleepy town full of secrets. Confident, compelling and with a surprise around every corner, I loved it." — Jane Harper, New York Times bestselling author of The Dry

"A killer premise, genuinely surprising twists and turns and an original, deeply memorable protagonist" — Dervla McTiernan, author of The Ruin

"A hugely-original premise, a guilt-ridden protagonist, a plot that won’t lie down. A great debut" — Chris Hammer, author of international bestseller Scrublands

"A gruesome murder, a podcast, now a blockbuster TV series. With the identity of the killer still a mystery, the man behind the broadcasts is desperate for a conclusion. Clever as hell and as timely as it gets, this is definitely one of the must-read thrillers of the season." — J.P. Smith, author of The Drowning and If She Were Dead

"Readers who stay the course will enjoy some vivid writing...A fine, twisty ending" — Booklist

"A truly magnificent story on so many different levels, Trust Me When I Lie should be at the top of everyone’s must-read list." — New York Journal of Books

"Benjamin Stevenson's debut mystery is a dark delight with flawed and damaged characters trying to solve a twisted cold case murder. Stevenson's engaging and sure-footed whodunit (originally released in Australia in 2018 as Greenlight) is a twisty delight." — Shelf Awareness

"Stevenson is a splendidly vivid and tricky writer. Readers will be curious to see what he comes up with next. " — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2019-05-27
Australian stand-up comedian Stevenson's fiction debut is anything but funny: It's the dark-hued story of a true-crime television producer whose miniseries is instrumental in freeing a wrongly convicted killer who might not be so innocent after all.

"I'm not a journalist," Jack Quick tells anyone who'll listen, and you have to admit he has a point. His TV series on the murder of English backpacker Eliza Dacey, which throws serious doubt on the culpability of Curtis Wade, the restaurateur on whose property Eliza's strangled, mutilated corpse was found, made him just as famous as Curtis and tied him even more inescapably to his notorious subject from the moment a new trial set Curtis free four years after his conviction. An even more important disqualification than Jack's celebrity is the need he feels to lie to Curtis and his kid sister, Lauren, his lawyer, Alexis White, prosecuting attorney Theodore Piper, Sgt. Andrew Freeman of the New South Wales Police, and even Detective Ian McCarthy, the NSWP ally who keeps feeding him information. The sad truth is that much as Jack hates lying, he's gotten used to it ever since a devastating childhood accident left his older brother, Liam, in a persistent vegetative state. His unexpected discomfort with Curtis' release is multiplied a thousandfold by a second murder with unmistakable echoes of the first. Is a copycat trying to get Curtis locked up again, or is Curtis celebrating his newfound freedom by acting out in fury against the enemies who locked him up in the first place? Although the threats to Jack's life multiply, he's actually facing psychological threats much worse than death.

Stevenson locks his remarkably small cast in a cage where they do unspeakable things to each other.

Kirkus Reviews