Nicholas Searle

"We die of old age from the inside out, rotting gradually as we get older."

Roy, an octogenarian con man is looking to make one final coup. He meets septuagenarian Betty through a dating app and intends to defraud her of he life savings. But is Betty as naïve as she seems?

It is hard to say too much about this book without giving the ending away. Enough to say that the book follows Roy’s attempt to con Betty interspersed with time shifts to his eventful and somewhat nefarious past.

In some show more respects this a hard book to review. Roy's past is revealed bit by bit in reverse so each turn is fairly well signposted before hand yet I also really engaged with some parts of it. I quite liked the basic idea, some of the techniques used and I liked the ending even if I had worked out many aspects of it beforehand. However, I was expecting something like a Tom Ripley character, charming but ruthless, but frankly Roy just wasn't that likeable and lacked any real menace.

Ultimately I found this an engaging but flawed novel. In the end felt that it read rather more like Tessa de Loo's 'Twins' than Ms Highsmith's renowned novel. However I would still read another book by this author. Now I'm off to see the movie. show less

The Good Liar is Nicholas Searle's first novel.

Roy is an octogenarian......conman. When we first encounter Roy, he is trolling Internet dating sites, looking for an older woman he can separate from her money. His latest date is Betty - and he thinks she's perfect for his needs. "I do it because I can, because I'm good at it. And these people, these stupid complacent people...They need shaking up."

But is she as clueless as Roy believes? Perhaps not - small snippets of dialogue led me to show more believe she wasn't. From Betty's thoughts..."Evidently he sees her as the gullible type."

Searle is very adroit in his storytelling technique. Chapters flip from current day to the past as Roy's life is exposed in reverse. We begin in the immediate past and travel back to his childhood, as the present unfolds. Searle has plotted an inventive, complex life for Roy. As each chapter revealed more, I had an inkling of where the end (or beginning) was going. Although I was partially correct, Searle still surprised me.

This is a slow building story, but Searle kept me engaged throughout. I was so curious after every chapter in Roy's life as to what would come next (or before) And throughout it all is Betty - an unknown quantity. What game is she playing at? Are they both good liars?

Roy is, quite frankly, despicable. I grew more and more disgusted as his past came to light. Although we don't know as much about Betty, I was quite drawn to her, hoping......well, I had a certain ending in mind.

I thought The Good Liar was quite a clever, unusual debut - one I enjoyed. show less

Roy Courtnay has been working one scam or another all his life. Now in his mid-70s he’s turned his hand to internet dating as a way to prey on wealthy widows. When he meets Betty she seems just his type—pretty and a bit ditzy. He provides her with welcome companionship and even opens up with his own concerns about his pension and how to stay financially afloat in these trying times. Does she ever worry about such things? Thankfully, he has a very good investment advisor who can help them show more both, but only to talk; he would never dream of interfering in her finances. Roy is The Good Liar, Nicholas Searle’s eponymous debut novel. As his plan progresses, we come to see, in chapter that go as far back as the 1930s, that whatever lies Roy is telling now they don’t compare to his truth.
Searle sets up The Good Liar as seamlessly as Roy does his con. Very little in the opening chapters are as they appear, but just as a good grifter gently lures their mark into compliance so Searle does with pages that blend small glimpses of honesty with life’s trivialities. Modern technology is confusing, the old days were better, joints ache, as does loneliness. It isn’t until the pages of the past assert themselves and begin to form a more complete picture that doesn’t mesh with Roy’s description of his “humdrum” life that the reader gets an idea of just how far the game reaches. With no way of seeing what we see, it seems likely that the guileless Betty is bait for the shark that is Roy.
The genius of The Good Liar is in the fact that even for skeptics or the readers who figure out everything early, it doesn’t matter because the key characters do not. And so, there is the building tension that someone (but who?) is going to be very unhappily surprised by the end. Searle builds the suspense beyond the current mystery with the lives lived by Roy and Betty. In moving from now back to then, he makes the past more critical to the future than the present and makes The Good Liar anything but a con game. show less

Bridget O'Neill was swept off her feet by her husband, a man from Belfast with links to the IRA, married him and settled into uneasy domesticity in the remote border country of Armagh. Francis O'Neill is a trained operative with the IRA, executing terrorist acts in Britain and the Continent, and controlled by 'Gentleman Joe', a high ranking leader. During a trip to Singapore both Francis and Bridget are separately approached by British intelligence to act as 'touts', however Francis' younger show more brother has recently been executed by the IRA for just this. Years later and Francis is involved with a plot to bomb and army barracks but is caught and sentenced. Francis knows he was betrayed and so does Gentleman Joe.

Having read Searle's first novel 'The Good Liar' I knew that this would be a fast-paced and twisty story but this second book is way beyond the first. Given recent events in which former leaders of the opposing sides in the Conflicts have been prominent there has been a lot of looking back at the bad times of the 1980s and 1990s, the shootings, the bombings and the general sense of fear. Searle looks at the impact on the communities and the individuals, the reader feels empathy for Francis, caught up in something that he can't get away from, and also for Bridget, her life limited to an isolated house and a distant husband. The title refers to both the O'Neill family and also the bigger IRA family and there is a dark sense of humour here, the obsession with cups of tea and cleaning the house, but there is also a rattling good storyline. The final twist is excellent - I didn't suspect who was the traitor. show less