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A Novel
by Denise Mina
Book Reviewed by:In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case forces one woman to make an impossible choice.
What will it take to tell the truth when your life depends on a lie?
A year ago, a father and his fiancée were brutally murdered in their opulent London townhouse, sparking the most high-profile murder investigation in recent history. Blood spatter expert Doctor Claudia O'Sheil's evidence put the killer behind bars—or so everyone believes. But since the trial, Claudia's learned a horrific truth: her evidence and her testimony were wrong. And someone she knows made sure of it.
Now, as she takes the stage to give a career-defining speech before London's elite, Claudia faces a devastating choice. Protect her children and her career with her continued complicity, or blow the whole conspiracy apart and reveal the truth: not only is the real murderer still out there, but they're in the audience.
As Claudia steps toward the microphone, she revisits that fateful night. What really happened? And what will Claudia say?
18:38
Professor Claudia Atkins O'Sheil, MBE, and Lord Philip Ardmore were taking the back stairs at the Royal College of Forensic Scientists in Regent's Park, heading down to the distant rumble of a party in the open courtyard.
Even here, in a little-used service area, the new building was elegant and understated. A handrail of pale ash spiralled seamlessly down from the third floor. A soft light from skylights tucked into the eaves made the concrete walls look like grey suede in the late January gloom.
In just twenty minutes Claudia was due on stage in front of an auspicious audience, being filmed and recorded as she gave a career-defining speech about her most famous criminal case. She would outline the facts of the murders at Chester Terrace and the subsequent investigation, explain how her scientific evidence had secured the conviction of a vicious murderer.
But Claudia was not going to give that speech. She was going to tell the truth tonight. It would ruin her life but she had to ...
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/09/2026)
This past week my reading took me back to the Greek Islands in The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Bloom. An excellent romantic novel with the plot in two different periods. Then I read This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman. An entertaining read about 3 generations of families dealing with the ...
-Lynne_G
But what is the truth, and why is it so dangerous? Neither question is answered before the book jumps back in time to one year prior, the night of the murder in question. The narrative alternates between present day, just before Claudia's speech, and the past year in which Claudia works to solve the case. It's not a unique framework, but it is successfully employed here, creating a frantic pace that complements Claudia's scattered emotions...continued
Full Review
(792 words)
(Reviewed by Jordan Lynch).
The protagonist of The Good Liar is a forensic scientist who has developed the Blood Spatter Probability Scale (BSPS), a fictional modeling system that uses blood spatter information from a crime scene to create a 3D model reconstruction of the events. Although bloodstain pattern analysis has been used to help solve real crimes for over a century, recent studies have discovered that many factors can influence the analysis of bloodstain patterns and create inconsistencies that could result in false convictions, as happens with the BSPS in The Good Liar.
Bloodstain pattern (BSP) analysis is the examination of the location, size, shape, and distribution of bloodstains at a crime scene. When these factors are analyzed in the context of ...
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