The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard

Blackstone Publishing, 336 pages, $24.99 (c2018)

What would you do if your boyfriend turned out to be a serial killer? That’s the question that underlies Catherine Ryan Howard’s book. Because Howard seems to effortlessly make Alison Smith real and sympathetic, it’s easy to slip into the book and watch Alison’s struggles.

Young Alison and her best friend from forever, Liz, are ecstatic when they both get into college in Dublin, Ireland. They are smaller town girls from Cork and they are looking forward to being independent. Alison meets Will Hurley pretty much right off the bat. They begin an intense but mutually supportive affair. No weird, debasing stuff here. Alison’s roommate is a bit of all right. Liz’s roommate is weird but avoidable. The bars are hopping with other young people. Times are good. So far, standard stuff. 

Then the killings begin. At first, it appears that a young woman, after a night out drinking, stumbled, fell into one of the large canals that run through Dublin, and drowned. For the most part there are no barriers to the canal waters which rise almost up to the road, so that was not hard to imagine. When a few more young women turn up drowned under the same scenario, the police begin looking for a serial killer.

The victims were all students at the college. The scrutiny becomes personal when someone Alison and Will know becomes a victim. Soon Will is taken into custody. Soon Will confesses. Soon Will is sentenced to five life terms in prison. Soon Alison flees to the Netherlands, where she is living and working when the current story opens up ten years later.

There is that clichéd knock on the door of Alison’s house in the Netherlands. Two Irish gardaí are standing there, wanting to take Alison back to Dublin to talk to Will. She has successfully — for the most part — sublimated the events of ten years ago. Why would she voluntarily go back to Dublin just to meet with someone she never wants to think about or see again? But of course she does. And that’s because the killings have started up again.

This bare bones recital of Howard’s book doesn’t do her writing justice. Under her pen, the prickly relationship between Alison and Liz and the sweet one between Alison and Will are well rendered. Then as the plot proceeds, Howard builds the drama well, introduces a third-person look at the killer, lightly involves the clichéd good garda/bad garda — because, well, it’s Alison gathering clues — and satisfyingly brings the curtain down. The best part is about Alison finally having the strength to face Will, something she could not do at the time he was caught. By escaping to the Netherlands, she put reconciling herself to the events of that time and her personal growth on hold. It’s time to let go and grow up, Alison.

This book has been nominated for the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Novel.