It’s 1749 in the St. James district of London. Hannah Cole, is the newly widowed owner of a small confectionary shop. William Devereux (real surname: Cullen), meets Hannah when he drops into her store and introduces himself as a financial advisor to her late husband. The two quickly hit it off.
The Art of a Lie, which is concise at fewer than 300 pages, quickly establishes that things are not as they seem with these two. Both characters are skillfully deceptive, and in critically important ways. Moreover, Jonas Cole, Hannah’s late husband, seems to have had dark secrets of his own.
Jonas appears to have been murdered in a robbery gone bad. Yet Henry Fielding, the famed British novelist (he published Tom Jones in 1749) turned magistrate, tells Hannah he suspects her husband may have been murdered not by a stranger but by someone he knew. Did Jonas, who acted as a conduit for payoffs by gambling dens to corrupt judges, run afoul of a vicious underworld character who killed him?
Fielding, who is investigating the death, reveals that Jonas left behind 1,500 pounds tucked away in a bank, which takes Hannah by surprise as she struggles to keep her business afloat. Where and how did Jonas get all that money? Did he acquire it legally? What will become of it if Fielding discovers, instead, that the stash was stolen from its rightful owner?
The novel’s period setting — Georgian England — adds a colorful and well-researched element to The Art of a Lie, as does the presence of Fielding. The novel is all the more appealing because Hannah and William each has a secret that is known to the reader but not to each other.
Hannah and William do share a common goal, at least initially: to convince Fielding that Jonas’s hefty bank balance was rightfully his before he died. If so, the inheritance should be released from probate and split between Hannah and her husband’s cousin Daniel, another heir.
But there the similarity ends. Hannah wants her share of the money to improve her financial stability and that of her store. William, who comes across as a dashing entrepreneur, hopes Hannah can get her hands on the money because he intends to trick her into giving most of it to him.
The narrative becomes increasingly convoluted but in an appealing way, leaving the reader eager to learn how it will resolve itself. When clues emerge suggesting to Hannah that William is a fraud, she begins to have second thoughts, all while worrying about preventing anyone from learning about her past.
A gangster from whom Jonas had stolen money wants William to reimburse him once the inheritance is released. But William realizes that to repay the thug and still take his own cut, he would have to steal all of Hannah’s windfall, not just a portion of it, as he had intended. So he cooks up a new scheme.
Meanwhile, Jonas’s cousin Daniel, who stands to inherit most of the money sitting in Jonas’s bank account, claims to have fallen in love with Hannah, who rebuffs him, prompting him to promise revenge. Is Daniel, who believes William is a scoundrel, scheming to wed Hannah for financial gain? Or is he sincere?
If all this sounds a bit like a storyline from a soap opera, The Art of a Lie is plenty sudsy (and not in a cleansing way). But it’s sufficiently suspenseful, well-plotted and fast-paced to keep readers on board. How will it end? Will the characters pay for their mistakes? And who, if anyone, will emerge unscathed?
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