There are people who don't recognize good and bad. They appear normal, even charming, but lack conscience and empathy. They see others as objects to use for their own benefit. They are called psychopaths. They are out there, wandering among us, and there's nothing we can do about it.
Liz Nugent's Lying in Wait is about just such a person. The path to who this person is and what they are willing to do leads the reader on a terrifying maze of twists and turns of shock and second-guessing, and in my case, a little shrieking.
The book starts out with one of the best first line's I've read:
My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.
Set in Dublin in the 1980s, a young woman living on the fringe goes missing. Annie Doyle's been in trouble with the law and to say she is down on her luck is an understatement. There is a devastating secret that ties Annie Doyle to Lydia Fitzsimons, the beautiful wife of a judge living a seemingly perfect life. The Fitzsimons are wealthy, reside on the gorgeous Avalon estate, and have a smart, sincere, teen-aged son named Laurence. Laurence accidentally witnesses an event one night that involves his parents and Annie Doyle that shatters everything.
Told over the course of five years and from the perspectives of Lydia, Laurence and Annie's sister, Karen, Lying in Wait is a tragic tale of epic proportions. Annie has a family who loves her and won't stop looking for her and the secrets surrounding Avalon threaten to destroy everyone who enters its stately grounds.