Simply Lies
Simply Lies (Mickey Gibson #1)
By: David Baldacci
[Fulfilled ‘Book by an author who has published over 20 books’ for Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“Life was a shell game. The winners could just hide the truth better than everybody else.”
This was a bit of a slow start for me. Probably because I started the book at the tail end of holiday activities so I was only able to read a little bit here and there. But once I got into it, it was more engaging.
I’m a fan of Baldacci’s books and apparently I haven’t read one in awhile. I don’t remember what kind of swearing his other books had— because I read him before I was really writing regular reviews—but this one had more swearing than I would like.
Simply Lies is the story of an ex-cop, cyber-sleuth, single-mom (Mick) being roped into a ‘treasure hunt’ by an unidentified caller (aka Arlene) who wants her to find the pile of money that was stolen from the mob years ago and whose owner has just been found murdered in one of his homes.
Mick has to maneuver the cryptic and manipulative Arlene, the cagey, hard-to-figure-out cop on the case, and the other mob-related players that want back what was taken. But which players are really out to harm her and which ones can she trust? Not everyone is who they say they are.
While this wasn’t the best Baldacci book I’ve ever read, I did enjoy it. It got a bit technical when talking crypto-currency and other cyber-sleuthing Mickey did, but I found it fairly easy to follow and it added in some extra layers to the complexity of the case.
I think I’d be interested in continuing the series to see what else Mickey gets up to.
Some reviewers have commented on Mick’s ‘stupidity’ in working on this case when she has two kids at home. That she’s selfishly looking for the thrill from her days as a cop instead of protecting her family from danger.
However, I would argue that I read it in the sense that working this case was really the only way to protect her family. She tried to get out of it, but the corrupt and powerful players in the hunt needed her expertise and would have continued to threaten her family until she helped them. And then she knew too much to just fade into the background. Plus her job was riding on proving her innocence and then her value to keep her job which provided for her family.
To me, both options were dangerous. That’s what made the stakes so high.
Other reviewers also seemed to get tired of the single-mom stuff in the book, but as a mom I found those parts relatable. Of course in real life you don’t typically find single-moms in dangerous and investigative roles for obvious reasons, but it was a unique type of character for a thriller and I liked it. While I can agree that the references to vomit were perhaps overdone, for the most part I felt like there was a good balance of showing her nurturing mother side and her joy in being a mom while also keeping the primary focus on the case and the dogged work she was doing to get herself out of the mess.
I was more bothered by a few other things. The writing on the wall that was found at the scene of the first murder said ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ Firstly, this didn’t really fit for me for a phrase a corrupt man would use as a mantra. And for what I believe it means, I don’t know if it really fit with the whole treasure hunt thing either. It just seemed out of place.
Secondly, Mick figured out the phrase was written by two different people because of handwriting analysis. Which is a significant plot point and clue for her, but why would two murderers make sure they both wrote half of the phrase on the wall? The only way that makes sense to me is if they were intentionally wanting to leave a clue, but they weren’t the ones who had placed riddles or puzzles for the money— the murdered man did.
Which leads me to another thing that bothered me- the murdered man really turned out to be quite a terrible and corrupt person. The whole, using substitution ciphers or planting clues and puzzles around just doesn’t jive with that type of character. It seems like if he can’t have his money, he wouldn’t want anyone else to either. Sure, he may have thought he was taunting people from the grave but then it would be an unsolvable cryptic message letting the people they had been ripped off and would never find it.
I know the Saw movies and the book A Killer’s Game show criminals who use puzzles to terrorize, but to me that’s a different kind of criminal than what the murdered man in this book was made out to be. It seems like two different personalities.
Lastly, I was bothered by the word ‘blouse’ at the end of the book. Because only grandmas say blouse instead of shirt. And even if someone did use the term blouse, they wouldn’t employ it when they are recounting the memory of when they were almost raped.
All that to say, other than the swearing, I think this is a pretty good thriller with a likable main character, a complex plot, and a satisfying ending.
It reminded me that I should go back and read more of Baldacci’s other series that I only read a couple books from. He’s written so many books that some may throw him into the James Patterson camp, but from what I’ve read so far, I think he’s elevated above Patterson and I’ll probably keep reading his books.
[Content Advisory: 10 f-words, 96 s-words; some sexual innuendo but in a detached sex-for-money kind of thing; trigger warning for child sexual abuse described while telling a memory and not in detail as the acts were happening, but still hard to read]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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