(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
A good, no, great crime thriller is always something to be savoured, enjoyed and thereafter, remembered.
But for that to happen you need an author who understands that the crime is not the only thing and that for any of it to impact beyond the initial act of the terrible deed, there must be a sizeable amount of affecting characterisation, the kind that elevates the central players in the narrative from faceless players in a story to people whose demise you will actually mourn.
But what if the crime itself is not wholly the thing and the novel is devoted more to the multiple whys around the act, to the people involved and to what drives them to make fatal mistakes, commit gross errors of judgement and to put themselves in peril to see justice done?
Then you have She Lied First by Dinuka McKenzie, a brilliantly compelling thriller which dangles one impressively intriguing mystery in front of you only to spin it out into a story where you begin to wonder, and oh happy days when you do, who is telling the truth, who has their sh*t together (no one really but that’s the fallible joy of being human) and how many mini-stories are intertwined, entangled and woven into a tapestry of lies, misdeeds and poorly executed acts of self preservation and selfish indulgence.
I breathed hard, wiping a hand across my mouth. It came away with a small trace of blood. The arsehole had deliberately nicked me.
It was too late to retaliate. He was already gone. Back in the direction of Kal.
It is, by any measure, a fiendishly complex story but so well does She Lied First tell its tale that you never feel overwhelmed by the increasingly complex and character-rich revelations which prove even the best of us can compromise ourselves by withholding the truth, even to those we love (and we do love them, acts of omission notwithstanding).
In fact, what makes this very human story stack up so well is that McKenzie (The Torrent, Taken, Tipping Point) who has always had an eye for character-centric, richly-involving storytelling, remembers at every stage of this twisty-turney story that what matters most in any thriller worth its stripes is that the people are always front and centre.
So it is that we spend a huge amount of time getting to know Sri Lankan-Australian sisters Devika and Kalyani, who we are promised, and oh, McKenzie does not disappoint (if anything, she over-delivers in the absolute best of ways), are withholding “terrible secrets” from each other, the kind that can, and do, schism apart the closest of relationships, create fear and mistrust and rent asunder previously cosy and mutually supportive relationships.
Moving in as flatmates in the coastal suburb of Cronulla, Sydney (Australia), life for the two sisters, finally free we assume of their overbearing Amma (mother), is delightful at first.
They’re either working or studying, grabbing takeaways when the urge hits and laughing and joking with an intimacy that only sisters can possess and which seems inviolable to ever being wrecked or sullied in any way.
(Dinuka McKenzie pictured with the reviewer at a Dymocks crime night book launch on 13 August in Sydney)
But we all know that the moment something looks bucolic and perfect in any story, it’s about to meet a fatal, or at the very leat, near-fatal reckoning, and so it is with She Lied First.
In ways we aren’t initially privy to, we discover that both sisters have stonkingly huge lies hidden away, ones that might have been okay to reveal early on but which, as time passes, becomes bigger and bigger and ever more deadly, to the point where Devika and Kalyani, who each get character-centric stories so we get their unique viewpoint on events, find themselves burdened by the secrets choking them somewhere malignantly deep inside.
The genius of She Lied First is that, for the most part, is doesn’t feel the need to keep to a strictly linear timeframe.
Past and present climb in and over each other, we are made privy to future events which explains present reality and eventually a metric ton of revelations about the past, not only about the two main characters but a host of supporting, deeply interconnected players, all of which come together in ways that make sense, enrich and turn a fairly straightforward story (but c’mon it’s never that, McKenzie is too good for that, but it seems that way at first) into something utterly complex and yet wholly and completely emotionally accessible.
It could do your mind in, and let’s be honest, you do need to have your wits about you (although thankfully you won’t need an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of events) but She Lied First is never something that keeps you out on the periphery looking in.
He steps inside and inhales deeply, trying to catch even a hint of her scent, her particular perfume of citrus and deep honey. Nothing. It’s like she had never even lived here.
Rather, it draws you in absolutely and completely, all the mind-bogglingly good reveals sitting comfortably alongside, and being affecting life by the raw, fallible humanity that sits obsessively at the heart of the story.
She Lied First is at the heart the story of a two good people, sisters who love each other but don’t always act lovingly towards each other, behind the scenes at least (remember, secrets and lies people, secrets and lies) and who are surrounded by people, some of whom are quite awful, who have secrets themselves, the revealing of which might have lessened some of the deadly impact on Devi and Kal, as they are known, if only people had been far braver and far less secretive way back when.
Or really even yesterday in some cases.
Peeling back the secrets and the lies, finding out who people are and what they have done, and having it all made known to people who might be able to enact some justice in a world perilously short of it, becomes the driving force for Dev who is, in many ways, the beating heart of the story.
She doesn’t always get it right, and in face, gets it quite wrong at times, but she is always someone with her heart in the right place, even if it is muddied and obfuscated, as it is for so many of us, by the simple messy fallibility of being human.
Astoundingly clever in ways that will take your breath away and which connects the dots in ways that are breathlessly daring and fantastically revelatory, She Lied First is a supremely good thriller which knows people, knows how even the best of them get it horrendously wrong but which understands that even amongst the debris of secrets kept and lies allowed to fester, and the chaotic bloody messiness that results, there can be some sort of redemption and healing, even if it is, because we are and remain human, fatally fallible too.