There’s a pretty impressive history of writers appearing from the shadows of secret government life to become an author with Ian Flemming’s prolific career one of the most well known. If Nicholas Searle ends up with just a fraction of the success of the man with the golden typewriter then his debut novel, The Good Liar, should wheedle it’s way to the upper echelons of the bestsellers list in the very least.
While he’s apparently not allowed to talk about his previous employment, he has been able to refer to being a senior civil servant for years before deciding to quit the circus of it all in 2011 in a bid to take up the challenge of fiction writing. You can probably join the dots right the way up to GCHQ, but that’s wholly unconfirmed, but in the very least it’s fair to say that he may well have a good amount of experience where secrets and lies are concerned. Equally, he may well have been a refuse collection manager for the council in Croydon for all we know, but then that wouldn’t sell too many books and doesn’t sound anywhere near as mysterious or exciting, so we’ll stick to the intelligence of our original guns for now.
His debut novel has been confirmed for a hardback release date of the 14th January 2016, so it could be one to add to your read list for early next year if you’ve got a penchant for conman thrillers. While there’s no back catalogue to influence your decision about reading The Good Liar it does come with a little praise on the front cover from Guardian journalist and columnist, Jonathan Freedland, describing it as a “taut, compulsive thriller with a dark, intriguing heart”.
The story is that of a professional liar, who is about to pull off a massive final con to set himself up for life outside of the ongoing hustle that has become his existence. In a small English town, Roy is plotting to meet and romance a beautiful women before doing a runner with her life savings, which is no mean feet in itself. Through the course of the book, his history up to that point starts to unfold backwards, filling in the gaps for the enigmatic con man character and the things he has done to get by with a life built on lies.
Like so many good books, there’s already the first glimmers of metaphor and allegory to the synopsis for The Good Liar and it’ll be interesting to read what Nicholas Searle has got to say on the themes of dastardly deeds, secrets and lies, consequences, crime and maybe punishment too. It doesn’t take too much probing to see the potential parallels between the story of Roy’s big con and Searle’s presumed previous career in the stickier areas of the Civil Service.
Either way, it’s a more abstract way of dissecting a large period of advanced secrecy than the dangerous adventure and unrelenting escapism of spy fiction. Looking at topics from aslant can sometimes reveal more than a direct glare, so we’ll be keen to see if that’s the case here.
