Why isn't this a podcast?
Listen for the Lie Amy Tintera Celadon
Sex, lies and podcasts converge in Amy Tintera's Listen for the Lie, an edgy mystery that artfully blends our growing obsession with the true-crime genre and our ongoing predilection for murder, mayhem and quirky detectives in fiction.
Tintera strategically plants some of the most popular tropes of the true-crime landscape into her search-for-a-killer tale: The murder takes place in the small town of Plumpton, Texas, where everybody has an opinion about who did it. The victim is Savannah “Savvy” Harper, a 24-yearold bartender who, like many women who meet her fate in the true-crime genre, is immortalized as an angelic former cheerleader who was adored by everyone. Her suspected killer, Lucy Chase, also 24 at the time of the murder, is remembered as the girl with a temper who once attacked a high school student. She and her well-to-do husband, Matt, whom she met at The University of Texas at Austin, were planning to open a restaurant in Plumpton.
After Savvy's body is discovered, Lucy is found stumbling along a back road. She is covered in Savvy's blood and suffering from a traumatic head injury. Lucy cannot recall what happened on that terrible night, but most of the people in town believe she's faking memory loss. Lucy has scratch marks on her arms, and her skin is found under Savvy's fingernails, but the search for a murder weapon comes up empty and no one considers that Lucy is seriously injured too.
Lucy moves to Los Angeles. Lucy has a big secret: In her head, she can't stop murdering people. The voice of Savvy Harper, her dead best friend, goads Lucy into imagining increasingly violent murders — of her mom, her ex-husband, her ex-boyfriend, even strangers. She doesn't follow through, but she hopes these morbid fantasies will help her remember what happened.
It's five years later and Ben Owens, moderator for the true crime podcast Listen for the Lie, decides to investigate Savvy's death. Lucy travels back to Plumpton to lend Ben a hand. She's a podcaster's dream sidekick, and her involvement in the investigation adds fuel to the novel — and the podcast.
As Ben and Lucy play sleuths, alibis fall apart and new evidence and possible killers come under suspicion, some — male suspects specifically — who the police didn't investigate. Tintera, the author of several books for young adults, slowly reveals her characters' true personalities, which in some cases means a penchant for violence or misogyny. In many ways, Listen for the Lie is that age-old story in which the testimony and opinions of men are given more credence than those of women, especially when what women say doesn't fit the narrative that men want to lock into place.
Through her deep understanding of this impediment to justice, Tintera succeeds as a writer of gritty fiction, imagining a podcast-worthy investigation that would draw a fan base if Listen for the Lie was an actual podcast.