The judge said (I will never forget this), ‘In many ways your life has been a form of punishment.’ Sometimes I wonder what he would have said if I had told the truth.

So Sheila Shand, a woman convicted of the manslaughter of her father, wrote in her journal in 1988, hinting at one of the many lies which Laura Wilson’s crime novel, A Thousand Lies, goes on to uncover and explain.

Sheila’s journals, and the sections from her point of view, are an important element of the novel, but the main story centres around her great-niece, Amy Vaughan. Amy is a journalist whose estranged mother has just died and left her another journal, one belonging to Sheila’s sister Mo, revealing a branch of the family she’d not known existed.

Throughout the novel, Amy struggles to deal with the complicated grief of losing a mother who blamed her for her father’s desertion, a ne’er-do-well father who returns in time to take advantage of her meagre inheritance and possibly endanger her life, and a neighbour who has the potential to become a future lover. At the same time she becomes increasingly caught up in the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of her great-aunt Mo, and the trauma that has kept Sheila and her ailing mother Iris silent for many years.

A Thousand Lies was first published in 2006 and was shortlisted for the inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger award. I discovered the author, Laura Wilson, via a Twitter suggestion after I’d followed Julia Crouch whose book Tarnished I reviewed last week.

I can’t say I was as riveted by A Thousand Lies as I was by Tarnished, but I am fascinated with its subject matter – domestic violence and its long-term psychological effects on women, particularly the ‘learned helplessness’ that keeps women trapped in a vicious cycle. Wilson deals with the subject with sympathy, subtlety and insight, and the plot intrigues the reader enough to keep the pages turning.

One shortcoming, for me, was to do with the novel’s structure: the most dramatic events occurred in the distant past, which the journal device and flashbacks bring to life. The effect of this ‘once-remove’ is an emotional distancing. For many crime readers, this distancing might be a good thing, as the events described are horrific. Readers of psychological suspense, however, might find the storyline lacks a desired sense of immediacy and engagement.

As events of the past begin to bleed into the present, however, the novel heads for a thrilling climax. A Thousand Lies is the first I’ve read by this novelist, but it won’t be the last. It is an engaging read.

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Author: Laura Wilson
Title: A Thousand Lies
Publisher: Orion
Date: 2006

I borrowed a copy from the library.