No More Lies by Rachel Abbott

It gives me absolute pleasure to be taking part in the blog tour for No More Lies, the brand new Tom Douglas thriller from Rachel Abbott. I love this series and loved being back in the company of Tom and Becky and the team. My thanks to Rachel Abbott for the advance copy of the book, and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the tour invite. Here’s what the book is all about:

About the Book

NO MORE LIES

It would be unfair to blame the woman I met tonight for turning my life upside down. She didn’t. It was already upside down. I just didn’t know it.

Recently life has been good for Mallory Hansen: a great job, a lovely home, and a wonderful man, Nathan, to share it with.

But now she must ask herself: is it all built on lies?

A shocking accusation has been made against Nathan, and Mallory doesn’t know who to believe. He denies everything, but all the signs point to his guilt. She has learned to trust Nathan, but she also remembers the boy he used to be.

As teenagers, Mallory and Nathan were part of a close-knit group of six friends until a vicious argument drove them apart. Now, fifteen years later, they are back in touch – only to find themselves drawn into a web of mutual distrust, one by one…

The attacks on their lives are skilfully targeted, designed to hit them where they hurt the most, and when a young woman disappears and a baby is abducted, DCI Tom Douglas must try to unravel the past and discover who is the architect of their misery.

My Thoughts

Oh I have missed Tom Douglas. I’ve loved this series ever since I read The Back Road what feels like a lifetime ago, and every new books reminds me just why Rachel Abbot is one of my favourite writers. In this latest case, Tom, DI Becky Robinson, and the team are faced with two very perplexing cases. A missing person investigation and a child abduction, both highly emotional and both with a disturbing edge that really gets the hairs on your arms standing on edge from the very beginning. The prologue is sinister, the cases, complicated, and the investigations leading the team to some really unexpected revelations.

As always, the story is told from varying points of view. Alongside the main investigation, told in third person, we are given a first person perspective from one of the characters, and ultimately suspects in the missing person case, Mallory. Mallory was a fascinating character, and learning more about her and her partner, Nate, really added to the suspense and intrigue of the story. Not only are we privy to Mallory’s present life, but also events from her past that explain the links between the various group of people who come to be caught up in the present day cases. As readers we always know that little bit more than the Detectives, but never the whole story, and I love that Rachel Abbot is able to lull us into a false sense of smugness, certain we know the truth of what is happening, before switching things up and turning everything on its head. Yes, we know the links between the cases, but the full extent of what is happening remains a closely guarded secret until just the right moment in time.

I have to be honest, I didn’t find the group of friends from Mallory and Nate’s teen years particularly endearing. As much of the story was in her voice, narrating her thoughts and fears, Mallory was the easiest to get to know, and I did feel some sympathy towards her. The author has made her uncertainty feel authentic, her anger and mistrust a natural response to Nate’s dishonesty in the beginning, as were her stubbornness and determination to get to the bottom of what was going on. But despite allegations against him, I did feel like I trusted Nate, perhaps more than I should have.

I love that Rachel Abbott always skilfully conveys the various emotions in play, from anxiety, to fear, to the overwhelming sense of loss and hopelessness that follows the child abduction. Mixed with the mystery and chilling narrative from the real perpetrator of the crimes, it really gives and adrenalin kick and pulled me even deeper into the story. The pacing is spot on as always, and I tore through this in just a couple of evenings.

One of the real draws of this series though is the Detective team. Tom Douglas and Becky Robinson are brilliant characters, people I am always more than happy to go on a high speed, high stakes, journey with. The camaraderie between them, and the wider team, really appeals, and whilst they take their responsibilities highly seriously, the banter and understanding between them is a real draw. There is a bond between the two leads that really takes some beating, and with some emotional and highly dramatic scenes seeing them once again in jeopardy, there is a sense that anything really could happen. With some serious revelations throughout, largely concerning Tom’s family, and some hold your breath moments at the end, it looks like Rachel Abbot may be setting us up for a fascinating next instalment and I cannot wait.

Tense, high stakes, fast paced action combined with brilliant storytelling make this another top read from Rachel Abbott. If you like a full on crime thriller that gets you into the head of both antagonist and victim, then this really is a series you should read. Highly recommended, I loved it.

About the Author

Rachel Abbott was born and raised in Manchester. She trained as a systems analyst before launching her own interactive media company in the early 1980s. After selling her company in 2000, she moved to the Le Marche region of Italy. When six-foot snowdrifts prevented her from leaving the house, she started writing and found she couldn’t stop. Since then her debut thriller, Only the Innocent, has become an international bestseller, reaching number one in the Amazon charts both in the UK and US. This was followed by bestselling novels The Back Road, Sleep Tight, Stranger Child, Kill Me Again, The Sixth Window, Come a Little Closer, The Shape of Lies, Right Behind You, Close Your Eyes, plus a novella, Nowhere Child, which was top of the Kindle Singles chart in the UK for over two years. She has now sold over four million books in the English language, and her books have been translated into over twenty languages.

In 2015 Amazon celebrated the first five years of the Kindle in the UK and announced that Rachel was its number-one bestselling independent author over this period. She was also placed fourteenth in the chart of all authors. In 2018, And So It Begins, the first title in a new series featuring Sergeant Stephanie King, was published in hardback by Wildfire Books – a Headline company. It was named by The Times as one of the best crime novels of 2018 and was top of the Amazon weekly chart for two weeks. The second book in the series, The Murder Game, was released in April 2020. Rachel Abbott now lives in Alderney and writes full time.

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