Review: Nine Liars

Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maureen Johnson hooked me with the Shades of London series back in the 2010s, but having left that series hanging high and dry for years, and the diminishing returns on this series to which she’s spent half a decade instead, are really starting to unhook me as a reader of hers. I mean, it was a bold move to write a single mystery stretched out into a trilogy of novels, then a fourth novel all standalone, and this one with a standalone murder mystery…but the most annoying directions taken on the romance front. I’m not surprised to see a lot of fellow readers immensely disappointed with how Johnson handles this series’ alleged flagship (though at least Janelle and Vi don’t provoke any drama, so there’s that.) And while this book does fulfill a longtime ambition on Johnson’s part to write an English country manor murder mystery, being a part of this series in particular means it relies on some thinly contrived plot reasons why Stevie even gets to go to England to investigate this cold case to begin with. At least there was the promise of comeuppance for one of the Nine Liars…though I’ll be honest, Nine Wankers would be a more perfect title to describe the obnoxious 1995 uni students around whom this cold case revolves. I’ll be generous with the two stars, but not for the first time, I’m prepared to drop this series for good.

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