I picked up this book after a few non-reading days. I was at my mother’s so not in the bathtub at my own place where the reading magic usually happens. There was nothing on TV and I was procrastinating. After an hour or so on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (in a rotation every 5 minutes) I finally picked up Spare Me The Truth by CJ Carver, which asks…

What if someone told you your life was a lie?

And I was pulled in. Big time. And had to keep reading until I’d finished.

Spare Me the Truth
by C.J. Carver
Published by Zaffre
on April 7th 2016
Source: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781785760334
Pages: 528

Goodreads

Dan Forrester, piecing his life back together after the tragic death of his son, is approached in a supermarket by a woman who tells him everything he remembers about his life - and his son - is a lie.

Grace Reavey, stricken by grief, is accosted at her mother's funeral. The threat is simple: pay the staggering sum her mother allegedly owed, or lose everything.

Lucy Davies has been forced from the Met by her own maverick behaviour. Desperate to prove herself in her new rural post, she's on the hunt for a killer - but this is no small town criminal.

Plunged into a conspiracy that will test each of them to their limits, these three strangers are brought together in their hunt for the truth, whatever it costs. And as their respective investigations become further and further entwined, it becomes clear that at the centre of this tangled web is a threat more explosive than any of them could have imagined.

Carver offers up a couple of different threads in this latest novel. Both plots were of interest and – could possibly – have held up as standalone novels.

One centred around Dan – his history and the loss of his memory, which he pursues with the help of Grace (the daughter of the woman who approaches him about his  past). And Dan soon learns he was indeed possibly more than a civil servant in his old life as he finds himself helping Grace uncover her mother’s secrets.

And then there’s Lucy who’s working on a spate of murders and trying to piece together the victims’ commonalities.

The plots eventually intersect through Grace and it seems there’s a connection between the the oddly disparate cases.

I very much liked Dan and enjoyed the time I spent with him, trying to uncover his past. I don’t think I’m offering up any spoilers by sharing that there WAS more to his past than he remembers but an experimental drug was able to help erase certain memories. Memories his former employers (and perhaps even he) wanted to be erased. In the interim he’s running around blindly, unsure of who to trust. Including his wife and father.

I also really liked Lucy who’s been kicked out of the Metropolitan Police. She a loner who doesn’t play well with others. It’s something she recognises however and she’s *trying* to change. In reality Lucy’s just prickly. She’s dealing with some personal issues, has little time for fools and is very very driven.

It took some time for the dots to join together on these very different and complex plots and I struggled for a while… wondering if there were two completely separate storylines. Their intersection was a bit left field and ‘seemed’ slightly improbable but I guess, in an increasingly volatile and technical world, anything is possible.

That aside, I read this in a sitting, as eager as Dan to uncover his secrets.

Spare Me The Truth by CJ Carver was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin and is now available.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.