The King of Lies

By: John Hart

Narrated by: David Chandler

Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

John Hart creates a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is poignant, a riveting murder mystery layered beneath the southern drawl of a humble North Carolina lawyer. When Work Pickens finds his father murdered, the investigation pushes a repressed family history to the surface and he sees his own carefully constructed facade begin to crack.

Work's troubled sister, her combative girlfriend, his gold digging socialite wife, and an unrequited lifelong love join a cast of small town characters that create no shortage of drama in this extraordinary, fast-paced suspense novel.

Hart's mastery of prose and plot belie his newcomer status as he explores the true heart of a man. An illuminating anatomy of a murder and the ripple effect it produces within a family and a community, The King of Lies is a stunning debut.

©2006 John Hart (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

• Mystery Writers of America 2007 Edgar Nominee, Best First Novel by an American Author

"[A] stunning debut, an exceptionally deep and complex mystery thriller....Few readers will be able to resist." (Publishers Weekly)
"This is a first novel that lunges off the page, just grabs the reader by the throat and won't let go....Hart is a fine stylist, turning phrases with a panache that recalls Raymond Chandler." (Booklist)

Just poorly written.

I'm about half way through and struggling to bother to finish it.
The writing seems as though an amateur wrote this. So much cliche rhetoric. Just slow and predictable and boring.

Great book

This book was outstanding, you will not be let down. I have been hooked on audiobooks for a some time and I loved this book.

Great lies

Such an exciting, well written book good details without going into too much detail I like feeling as if I’m there highly recommended

Loved it - Kept me riveted

I don't give many books five stars. Four stars maybe but this was a great listen. I really hope to be able to listen to many more books by this author. I read some of the other reviews (after listening, fortunately) and don't really get the complaints about the narrator who I thought was very good. I'm a big fan of whodunnits and love it when the author can keep you guessing up until the end. I have to admit I had a hunch who had done it toward the end but had not figured out all of the details and the unraveling at the end was very enjoyable after listening to such a long book. Not complaining about the length though. When a book is good you want it to be nice and long. And this one had enough plot twists and turns to keep it moving and keep my interest. Great listen!!!

Just a tad short of 4 stars!

I listened to this puzzle-murder-legal-procedural-mystery about four years ago. And forgot that I had!!! Found it in my library and about two hours in, I recalled whodunit. And yet everything is so intricate and only dimly recalled so Hart had me again. It's a good listen. David Chandler's merely VERY good. Which means his greatness doesn't intrude. Chandler's presence becomes invisible, which is a MAJOR compliment to an actor.

My how the lead character changes as this yarn unfolds. It's all about introspection and personal revelation, sometimes in such detail that I wonder if Hart wasn't padding the page count a little. Also, I wish the editor had done a global search for the word "sorry,: deleted half of his findings and used a thesaurus to morph another 50% of the remainder.

But… Knowing the ending, which I recall came as a surprise the first time through, the layers of plot complexities were even more intriguing. Uh-huh…it's a good listen… Enjoy it, huh?

Kept my interest...

A love story, a mystery, a legal thriller and some life lessons thrown in for good measure.
I enjoyed this book very much and hope to get more from this author. Well worth the credit and the time.

An excellent read

John Hart deserves the awards he has received . This is a top rated introspective mystery. It follows the weaving story of a man trying to figure out his feelings about his family while attempting to solve his fathers murder. At times he blunders badly but all in a sincere effort to undo the perceived wrongs he believes he caused as a brother, husband and son. The characters are very real and as they are unmasked he constantly reevaluates the lies that have become his hollow life. The mystery itself wanders in many directions keeping the readers attention acute. Worthy of five stars all around. If one wants a book that is a joy to follow, than this is an excellent choice. Mike Dunn

Just ok

I did like the narrator, and I think that carried the story better than if I had read this book in print. The story itself is not steller, and not horrible. One review wrote about the class system in the south and its depiction in the book (that was a major deciding factor in my download), but there was nothing really geographically specific there. Overall the book did make my daily commute less of a chore, but there are better written stories.

The good, the bad and the so-so

Any additional comments?

By the second chapter, I was wondering if I was going to able to make it to the end. By the seventeenth chapter, I had to know whodunit.

I was immediately hit by the things that I DIDN'T like about this book - the prose leans to the turgid, hand-wringing and oh-so-poetic-descriptive. At times, it reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson's flair for overstatement, minus the irony. Like a dinner weighed down with too many heavy courses, the author would have done well to add some palette-cleansing humour from time to time. This aspect is made worse by the style of the narrator. There is nothing technically wrong with David Chandler's narration - he has a nice-sounding voice, he's clear and easy to understand but his delivery for the book is also in the same tone, which adds yet more weight to an already sticky morass. I think it likely he could narrate other stories very well.

The character development is fairly good, though I think the author has fallen into the trap of painting the two of the main female characters in the cliches of archetypal bitch-goddess and madonna-angel roles. I found them both a bit unbelievable - few people are really THAT bad or THAT good.

What I did like about the book? It kept me guessing. The plot has some nice twist and turns and the story kept me hooked - and, well, what more do you want from a thriller? As far as I can tell, it looks like this was Hart's first published novel so perhaps he gets better at sketching characters as he develops his craft.

NOTE: For those with delicate sensibilities, there are some sex scenes in this book, not in gory detail, but there they are. There are also a few tougher things, including a couple of instances of sexual child abuse. I appreciate these warnings myself, so thought I would add them.

You can believe the reviews

I saw a review that said Hart's new novel is almost as good as King of Lies, so I decided to read KoL and I loved it! I now have a new favorite author😋. I'm especially proud that I figured out who done it early on. Damn I' m good😎