Don’t Believe It

Charlie Donlea / Penguin Random House / $33

The public’s obsession with “true crime” documentaries underpins this whodunnit thriller. Grace Sebold has spent 10 years incarcerated in the Caribbean for pushing her boyfriend off a cliff but maintains her innocence. She contacts a former school friend, Sidney Ryan, now an up-and-coming filmmaker. If convinced of the truth of Grace’s story – and its television potential – Sidney will produce a documentary series that Grace hopes will lead to an acquittal and Sidney expects will catapult her into the big league. The resulting Girl of Sugar Beach rates its socks off and public clamour leads to a retrial. However, as Sidney uncovers more about Grace, peeling away layers of deception like onion skin, she realises someone is pulling her strings. Her dilemma is stark: risk her career by telling what she knows or cynically follow a cunningly manipulative script? Charlie Donlea has nailed the merciless ratings/deadlines imperative that drives the TV machine and leads journalists to value sensation over truth. In Grace, he has concocted a truly disturbing character and the suspense is relentless. By the time Don’t Believe It reaches its last act, the reader’s nagging sense of disquiet has inflated to a full-blown anxiety attack.