The liar's daughter

No one deserves to be taken before their time. Do they?

Joe McKee – pillar of the Derry community – is dead. As arrangements are made for the traditional Irish wake, friends and family are left reeling at how cancer could have taken this much-loved man so soon.

But grief is the last thing that Joe’s daughter Ciara and step-daughter Heidi feel. For they knew the real Joe – the man who was supposed to protect them and did anything but.

As the mourners gather, the police do too, with doubt being cast over whether Joe’s death was due to natural causes. Because the lies that Joe told won’t be taken to the grave after all – and the truth gives his daughters the best possible motive for killing him…

 

Claire Allan is a Northern Irish author who lives in Derry~Londonderry.
She worked as a staff reporter for the Derry Journal for 17 years, covering a wide array of stories from court sessions, to the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, health and education and human interest features.
She wrote her first novel in 2006, to mark her 30th birthday and it (Rainy Days and Tuesdays) was subsequently published and became an instant bestseller in 2007.
Claire wrote seven further women's fiction novels between 2007 and 2015. In 2016 (when she turned 40) she decided to change genre and try her had at domestic noir. Her first domestic noir novel, Her Name Was Rose was published by Avon/ HarperCollins in 2018 and became a bestseller in the UK, Canada, Australia and was a USA Today bestseller.
It was subsequently nominated in the Dead Good Reader Awards in 2019.
Claire has followed up on the success of Her Name Was Rose with Apple of My Eye and Forget Me Not.

My Review

This is a multi-layered psychological story that is cleverly told. First, you feel sympathy for a character only to have the rug pulled from under your feet and then it's all turned on its head again. In fact, just about everyone has a motive in this book and just when you think you've worked it out, you find you are mistaken. It is only after Joe's death that the truth can emerge and it's a story of lies, cover-ups and grief. It's the story of a small, close-knit community and what goes on behind closed doors. Very clever but not pleasant reading as so many people are touched by the events in this story, a story that is all too closely reflected in real life.