Maggie Barbieri

4.5 stars.

Lie in Plain Sight, the third installment in Maggie Barbieri's series featuring baker (and amateur sleuth) Maeve Conlon, is another perplexing and complex mystery.

When Taylor, the daughter of her newly hired employee Trish Dvorak, goes missing, Maeve cannot help but feel responsible. Although Maeve's boyfriend, Detective Chris Larsson, is on the case, she knows both Chris and the small town police department are out of their depth so she begins investigating the disappearance on show more her own. When she discovers another teenage girl from a neighboring town vanished without a trace under eerily similar circumstances the previous year, Maeve is convinced there is a connection between the two cases.

Maeve is still a little impulsive and it does not take long for her to become obsessed with trying to find Taylor. She often acts without thinking and while most of the time this is not a problem, she occasionally ends up some rather dangerous situations. Determined, intelligent and headstrong, Maeve does not hesitate to act on her suspicions which often results in some rather unpleasant confrontations with the town's residents. Despite her slightly off center moral compass, Maeve has the best of intentions when she begins her investigation into Taylor's disappearance and it is impossible to find fault with her reaction when she uncovers the truth.

Maeve's personal life remains a bit of a mess and her relationships with daughter Heather, ex-husband Cal and boyfriend Chris continue to be complicated. She and Heather are often at odds and their moments of closeness are fleeting since it does not take much for their interactions to rapidly deteriorate. Ex-husband Cal's current marriage unexpectedly hits a rough patch and Maeve's somewhat turbulent relationship with him becomes even more awkward and tense. Her romance with Chris begins to falter under the weight of her dark secrets and her inability to completely honest with him about certain aspects of her life. Throw in Maeve's lack of confidence in Chris as a detective and their relationship becomes even more rocky.

Fast-paced with an intriguing storyline, Lie in Plain Sight is a riveting mystery that fans of the genre are sure to enjoy. With a long list of suspects and plenty of small town secrets, Maggie Barbieri brilliantly obscures the truth about Taylor's disappearance until the novel's dramatic conclusion. It is another wonderful (and quite possibly, last :( ) installment in the Maeve Conlon series that I absolutely loved and highly recommend. show less

Maggie Barbieri's Once Upon a Lie is a suspense-laden mystery that takes many unexpected twists and turns. Not the typical police procedural, this compelling whodunnit is a fascinating story that I found impossible to put down.

Lead protagonist Maeve Conlon is one of the most complex and well-crafted characters that I have encountered in a very long time. On the surface, she is a typical harried divorced mom juggling the demands of caring for an aging parent, raising her teenage daughters and show more trying to keep her bakery in the black. She has a dry wit and off beat sense of humor that kept me giggling off and on throughout the story. Her patience with her father is never-ending and this part of the storyline is quite poignant and a little bit heartbreaking. Maeve is fiercely protective of her daughters and I just had to laugh at the lengths she is willing to go to in her attempts to keep them out of trouble.

But there is a dark side to Maeve that has its roots in her tangled past with Sean. Bits and pieces of her traumatic childhood are slowly revealed throughout Once Upon a Lie and although I had a pretty good idea of what Maeve's secrets might be, the complete truth is still pretty shocking. What, if any, impact these past events have on the present remains unclear for most of the story and even with full knowledge of Maeve's past, I was absolutely stunned by not only her actions, but the novel's dramatic conclusion.

Once Upon a Lie is a riveting murder mystery with a well-developed and sympathetic cast of characters. The plot is unique and full of surprising twists and I cannot wait to see what Maggie Barbieri has planned for future installments inthis innovative and intriguing series. show less

Once Upon a Lie by Maggie Barbieri is December 2013 Minotuar Books publication. I received copy of this book from the early review program at Library Thing in exchange for an honest review.
Maeve's life is far from fairytale perfect. Yes, she's a "soccer mom", but... she is divorced, her ex-husband, Cal, having dumped her for a high maintence younger woman. She is raising her two girls, one of which is going through some sowing of wild oats. Maeve and Cal at times do not agree on the right show more approach to parenting. She is trying to keep her bakery shop afloat, and take care of her father, Jack. Jack, a former police officer, is in an assisted living facilty suffering from alzheimers.
Maeve's assistant at the shop, Jo, is recovering from a divorce as well as from cancer treatment. Jo is nice, but sometimes she's not all that much help.
When Maeve's cousin, Sean, is murdered, Maeve is hardly broken up over it. In fact, it's all she can do to keep from dancing on his grave. But, when the police begin to investigate it becomes clear that Jack had pulled a disappearing act from the assisted living facility at the exact same time Sean was murdered. He quickly becomes a suspect.
If all this weren't tangled up enough, Maeve is a witness to a domestic dispute in her shop that has her very concerned for the wife and children.

I really enjoyed this book. This is a new to me author. This is a dark, twisty little story about abuse, family, grief, lies, secrets, and the realities of life and one woman's desperate attempt to keep her family safe.
This one is "outside the box" and we need more like it. Overall this one is an A+ show less

ARC provided via Netgalley.
You can find my reviews at Carlene Inspired.

Maeve Conlon agrees to let her employee's teen daughter walk home from school when her mom is out on delivery, but when she's not home hours later things turn sour. She's just vanished and there's no solid leads. Maeve feels responsible, she feels guilt, and she knows there's more to Taylor's disappearance than meets the eye. Maeve takes things into her own hands and finds that the small town of Farringville has more show more secrets than one would ever expect.

What a perplexing mystery! I've had Lie in Plain Sight in my Kindle for a little while and when I hit a reading slump this week I picked it up because I knew it was set to be released soon. Color me surprised when I couldn't put it down. Not only is the story-line complex, but the characters were so secretive that I couldn't stop turning the pages in hopes of getting farther beneath the surface. The mystery was not one I could have easily guessed, while there were times I thought Maeve was on the wrong track, nothing could have prepared me for the twists Maggie Barbieri inserted into this book. The characters were all very realistic, like anyone you'd meet in your local coffee shop, but with masks hiding the reality. As I read I found myself really seeing and feeling what Maeve saw and felt; she's a character that's too impulsive, but has the best of intentions. Her past is definitely dark and I actually liked that her past haunted her so much that it drove her to fight for justice and revenge. I enjoyed that Maggie Barbieri really showed how Maeve and her family fell apart as Maeve got obsessed, it felt realistic and I had a lot of compassion for her. And I seriously can't get over how many secrets were uncovered in this book, they just never stopped, and they affected everyone, it was a big spider web of lies.

I didn't have any idea that this was the third book in a series about Maeve Conlon, amateur sleuth, but I certainly want to read all of them. While it didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the book, I do think the previous novels would be better to read before picking up Lie in Plain Sight. This was a great suspense mystery and I would absolutely recommend it. show less