Simply Lies

By: David Baldacci

Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Corey Carthew

Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 6:20 Man comes a twisting new psychological thriller in which two women—one a former detective, the other a dangerous con artist—go head-to-head in an electrifying game of cat and mouse.

Mickey Gibson, single mother and former detective, leads a hectic life similar to that of many moms: juggling the demands of her two small children with the tasks of her job working remotely for ProEye, a global investigation company that hunts down wealthy tax and credit cheats.

When Mickey gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson, she thinks nothing of Arlene’s unusual request for her to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients and fled. That is, until she arrives at the mansion to discover a dead body in a secret room—and that nothing is as it seems.

Not only does the arms dealer not exist but the murder victim turns out to be Harry Lancaster, a man with mob ties who used to be in Witness Protection. What’s more, no one named Arlene Robinson works at ProEye.

In the blink of an eye, Gibson has become a prime suspect in a murder investigation—and now her job is also on the line until she proves that she was set up. Before long, Gibson is locked in a battle of wits with a brilliant woman with no name, a hidden past, and unknown motives—whose end game is as mysterious as it is deadly.

©2023 David Baldacci (P)2023 Grand Central Publishing

Good read

You must have time alone to follow along. If you do, you will enjoy this book. If you don’t have the alone time, you will get lost and confused. This is a winner,

Enjoyable

Story was enjoyable and good characters as usual. Some of the male narrators were not so good IMO.

Grandpa Simpson?

Good story, Baldacci is one of the greats in his category, but the narration was weird. The female narration was top notch, and thankfully this is a female driven story. But the man that made up the male voices where really, really bad. It all culminated when an older gentleman came in to the story, with some lung issues. Come on, that was a bad attempt at Grandpa Simpson. That ruined a bit for me. Sadly

Great story line and well-developed characters

But Baldacci is one of the enormously talented contemporary thriller writers who view it as oh-so-chic to garnish his narrative with his characters spewing the name Jesus as a curse and Holy Shit (some readers believe that only God is holy). I am NO fundamentalist evangelical, but I DO wonder if I am the only Christian thriller fan who will never again purchase a book by an author who proudly demonstrates his modern sensibilities by sprinkling his text with characters’ expressions which readers such as I view as blasphemous.

Good Listen

Good Baldacci book with twists & turns. Different from his usual. The characters were very interesting. I still miss the earlier Baldacci's like Absolute Power, Camel Club series, King & Maxwell series, Will Robie series.

Really enjoyed this audiobook!

Good book. The story and performance were both really good. I liked the main characters.

Disappointed

The plot gets off to a weak start - main character’s actions are not believable when phone call is received. The story gets better but the ending falls off again. Baldacci is usually better than this.

Good read

Great read! Would enjoy more in a series with two female leads.

Definitely recommend to read

Not your average Dave

I had just finished listening to Jodi Picoult’s latest novel, Mad Honey, (highly recommend) when I saw this book was available. From the first chapter, I felt as if I had fallen back into another Picoult novel. If you are looking for the intrigue of the Camel Club or the hard-hitting action of the King & Maxwell series, sorry to disappoint. This is a kinder, gentler Baldacci. Spoiler alert, is David developing another dynamic duo series with Langhorn and Gibson?

Voice actors make this unbearable.

Story is so so. Definitely not DB’s best. The problem here is having to listen to mediocre writing performed by these 2 people. Insipid females and the horrible COPD old man voice!