Simply Lies in David Baldacci

 Con artist Arlene Robinson is telling Simply Lies in David Baldacci’s psychological thriller coming out April 18. Mickey Gibson, a former police detective and now a divorced mother of two, works at home in Williamsburg, Virginia, for ProEye, a global investigation company that locates tax and credit cheats.

Robinson, pretending to be from ProEye, contacts Mickey to assign her to conduct an inventory in a vacant home in Smithfield, Virginia, owned by an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients. When Mickey arrives at the place an hour away from her home and starts her inventory, she comes up with one dead body in one secret room.

The jig is up when Mickey learns there is no Arlene Robinson at ProEye, and the police are considering Mickey a suspect as she is on the scene of a murder. Turns out there is no arms dealer but there is a very dead Harry Lancaster who was an accountant for the mob before he squealed, and went into Witness Protection with his family including two children.

Now calling herself yet another name, Clarisse tries to pull Mickey into a complicated situation—finding the money that Lancaster  stole from the mob. At odds for a while, the two women start to work together bringing more and more details to light. While they go about searching for the fortune Lancaster claimed to have amassed, dreadful secrets come out about Lancaster and other criminals who restarted their lives in Witness Protection.

How will Mickey clear her name in the murder case when she has no way to contact the woman who assigned her to inventory Lancaster’s house? Why is Arlene-Clarisse-whatever her real name is so intent on finding the treasure? Why does the detective investigating the case have no history beyond the past 20 years as Mickey learned when she researched him?

Baldacci takes the reader into new territory with crypto currency and Non Fungible Tokens, NFTs for short, when Lancaster’s bankroll seems to be deeply hidden. Fortunately, Mickey’s search skills are cutting edge as she can dial it in when it comes to uncovering the concealed fortune.

David Baldacci has published 40+ novels for grownups since his first book Absolute Power in 1996. A Virginia native, Baldacci and his wife Michelle co-founded the Wish You Well Foundation that works to increase literacy in the United States.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 20, 2023.

I would like to thank Grand Central Publishing, Hatchette Book Group, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.