Your favorite bookstore or library's thriller section is filled with books that boast one snappy idea but that fizzle out by chapter five because they have nothing else. Amy Tintera's "Listen for the Lie" has plenty of "else."
The main snappy idea is that Lucy, the amnesiac heroine of "Listen" (or, possibly, antiheroine), isn't sure if she committed the book's central murder, which happened five years earlier.
Here's the "else": A journalist named Ben's true crime podcast is trying to get to the bottom of the murder, whose victim was Lucy's best friend, Savvy. And Lucy is a wickedly funny narrator. And the people who still think Lucy did it include not just herself but also her parents and ex-husband. And Lucy's decision to go back to the scene of the crime for the first time in years is just the first of many heinous choices, which also include an affair with Ben, a possible fling with her ex and agreeing to be interviewed for the podcast.
Tintera is not the first thriller writer to incorporate the popularity of crime podcasts but the reason she's more successful than, say, Stacy Willingham was in "All the Dangerous Things" is that she includes transcripts of the podcast, in which Ben's interviews with key witnesses are used in place of flashbacks to fill us in on the events that led up to Savvy's murder. As Lucy listens to (and we read about) each episode, she becomes more convinced she must figure out who killed her friend — even if shedunit.
Lucy is irreverent company, even if she is a murderer (first sentence of the book: "A podcaster has decided to ruin my life, so I'm buying a chicken"). Tintera also creates a handful of entertaining supporting characters, including Lucy's understanding high school buddy and Beverly, her grandmother, from whom she gets her sense of humor. Beverly's reply, when told she's too old to drink so much replies, "Why not? Way I see it, seems like the perfect time to develop a drinking problem. It's dull as hell around here."
Speaking of drinking, Tintera wisely avoids the tired, "Girl on the Train" trope of a protagonist who's too wasted to present us with a reliable picture of what's happening. Lucy is not unfamiliar with a cocktail or two but she's sober for almost all of "Listen" and, once you swallow that she can't remember what happened the night Savvy died, the rest of the novel plays out in a way that feels credible and satisfying.
This is the debut thriller by Tintera, whose previous books have been for young readers, and it's so assured that I can't wait to read more from her. Young readers' loss may be thriller lovers' gain.
Listen for the Lie
By: Amy Tintera.
Publisher: Celadon, 333 pages, $26.99.
