Author James Siegel's fourth novel, Deceit, is a whopper of a mystery. Toying with the unreliable narrator trope and mixing it with a healthy dose of paranoia, Siegel creates a book that is original and unputdownable.
The story revolves around Tom Valle, a disgraced journalist, who is more or less banished to a small town in California to work for the local paper. Then a car accident takes place nearby and one of the drivers involved burns to death. What follows is a chain of events that will challenge Tom's sanity and endanger his life.
To say the novel is filled with twists is an understatement, as the plot is serpentine and complex. But Siegel knows what he's doing, never losing control of the plot or pace, or losing sight of the moral dilemma at the center of the story, which is the price of redemption for a pathological liar. Even if Siegel's prose gets a little cluttered every now and then, he's a master storyteller and dialogue writer
Overall, Deceit is an atmospheric, addictive, and haunting read, and is highly recommended for fans of psychological mysteries and paranoid thrillers.
Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.
Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon.
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