You want a good time?  Buy this book, sit down, drink some tea, and read it.  Hallie Ephron’s Never Tell a Lie isn’t big on surprises, and the twists aren’t too twisty and shocking, but it’s such good fun and Ephron writes with such joy, it doesn’t matter.  And it doesn’t keep the story from feeding off the bottom as it could have easily done.

As the book description says, it all started with the yard sale.  Not really, but you will discover that later.  Ivy and her husband, David,  have cleaned their home of some clutter in preparation for their newborn; Ivy is eight months pregnant.  They have waited to just about the last minute to do all this, including fixing up a nursery, because they have been down this preggo road before and then lost the baby.  So in a burst of nesting, they are selling their junk off to neighbors, friends, and strangers at reasonable prices.

It’s in the middle of all this bargaining that life throws them a curve ball named Melinda White.  Ivy and David don’t know her at first, but then realization comes crashing and they can’t get away from Melinda fast enough.  Melinda, also with child to the nines, attended high school with Ivy and David.  Weird, awkward, Melinda White.  Strange little Melinda who always had a crush on football star David, and a fascination with his high school sweetheart, Ivy.  Amid the buyers, and the exchanges of money for used goods, Melinda enters Ivy and David’s home.  And promptly disappears.  No one sees her leave.


Luckily, the police find her bloody clothes in a trunk Ivy and David set out for trash pick-up a couple of days later.  David, naturally, becomes a suspect in Melinda’s murder.  And it’s up to very mommy-to-be Ivy to clear her husband’s good name.  Sadly, the deeper she digs, the more she realizes that David isn’t telling all he knows about Melinda; his and Melinda’s pasts intertwine, and it’s those secrets from the past that cast a shadowy cloud of doubt over David’s innocence.

Like I said, Never Tell a Lie is not a grand mystery by any means, and it helps that it doesn’t try to be.  It’s kind of like those really good Movies of the Week the networks used to make hundreds of years ago.  It’s like sitting down and catching up with an old friend, and it’s a nice little plot device for the hero to be ready to drop a baby at any moment.  You don’t really see that every day.  At least I don’t.

If for nothing more than a breezy way to pass an afternoon, read it.

4 out of 5
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