High-Stakes Summer Thriller, THE LIES I TELL by Julie Clark

Most of the great confidence men (con artists) of mystery and thriller fiction are exactly that -- men. In THE LIES I TELL, Julie Clark establishes two powerful and compelling women willing to play any necessary game to achieve their goals, and turns the tables on the classic form. Moreover, Clark lets these women address us in alternating first person, telling their own stories. Yet she still manages to hide her final twists until they become startling and irredeemable.

Meg Upton is obviously out to manipulate situations and set up her targeted men for pain and loss. She's blunt  about her methods:

I spend hundreds of hours on observation and research. Profiling the different people in your life, finding the one I can befriend, the one who will lead me to you. When I'm done, I know everything I possibly can about you, and most of the people around you. By the time you're saying nice to meet you, I've already known you for months.

Does this worry you? It should.

Kat Roberts, an investigative reporter, has been watching for traces of Meg's operations, and hopes to save her finances through an exposé of the high-rolling criminal. But Kat's life has stresses that make her career increasingly difficult, even hazardous. The closer she gets to Meg -- who knows herself well enough to say "I was born to be a grifter" -- the more Kat's got to face her own mistakes and the way she's allowed life to run another sort of con on her.

Still, it's the conniving Meg who most often puts it all on the line:

I'm not a fool. I know Kat plans to write about me, exposing who I am and what I do. I see beneath her soft sympathy ... I have a plan too, and Kat will be a useful part of it. It's easy to pull her in and feed her the pieces I need her to have.

Does Kat guess this? Her boyfriend warns her: "A con artist isn't going to just let you walk away. She's going to want to make you pay."

Clark's gift lies in holding each character's needs so close to the surface that a surge of empathy for either is immediately countered by a wave of concern over what threat each of these women will impose on the other. As with her earlier suspense, The Last Flight, this author pulls the threads of tension tighter with each new action and revelation, until, like a deck of cards cut and arched upward against the fingers, the patterns suddenly rearrange in a shattering set of revelations.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Take Back Your Life: Women Get Stronger in THE LAST FLIGHT, Suspense from Julie Clark

All the publication dates lately are sliding around, as book publishers and bookstores adapt to a virus-threatened world. Ever get the feeling we are already living in a suspense novel of our own?

Still, THE LAST FLIGHT from Julie Clark has a pretty firm new release date of June 23 from Sourcebooks. And if you love a powerful and creepy work of suspense, so smoothly written that all you need to do is check that the doors are locked and keep turning the pages, this would be a great time to pre-order this crime novel. It's Julie Clark's second (the first was The Ones We Choose, in 2018). Chilling, twisty, and highly memorable, it's a good escape for the summer reading stack. Reader Beware: If you've been in the midst of an abusive situation, whether as the person working for a way out, or as the friend of someone facing those scary choices, THE LAST FLIGHT will nudge all your trauma buttons. And then, if you can keep going all the way through the book, it may convince you that if we "see" each other and lend a hand, there will be more fresh starts.

Claire Taylor Cook's trapped in a marriage so cruel, with a political husband so powerful, that her own death might be the only way out of it. With the help of a friend from her own past who has connections with organized crime, Claire begins plotting her own escape. It's not going to be easy—her abusive husband has her monitored all the time—but just the hope is enough to help her keep going: "Over the next year, Petra and I assembled a plan, choreographing my disappearance ore carefully than a ballet. A sequence of events so perfectly timed, there could be no room for error."

But of course, life's unpredictable. When an air crash threatens Claire's plan yet offers her a chance to hide in a new way, she takes action:

My eyes land on Eva's purse, and I reach into it and pull out a ring of keys and her wallet. I pocket the keys and open the wallet, memorizing the address on her license. 543 Le Roy. I don't hesitate. I walk out of the airport, into the bright California sunshine, and hail a cab.

It seems almost too easy—and it turns out to be dangerous. Soon Claire's risks have doubled, with the husband she's tried to escape hunting for her, and her "new life" being far from safe as well.

Clark's intense pacing turns even more compelling as she adds further twists. And when the book's done, even quarantine won't look so stressful anymore. Highly recommended for those who appreciate a thriller that's taut, edgy, and terrifying.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.