The Past and Other Lies

Mystery fans and history buffs alike know that nothing will poison the present like lies from the past. In Maggie Joel’s The Past and Other Lies the present is represented by sisters Charlotte and Jennifer, who have a history of “amusing” little misunderstandings about attempted suicide, and share a sense of humor sharp enough to leave puncture wounds. Their distant past is their granny, Bertha, wrapped in memories of London in the 1920s, when the world was either changing or blowing up or both, when she met a young man at a political rally, when she and her sister, Jemima, brought new meaning to betrayal. And bridging the two is Bertha’s daughter, Deirdre, shaped by her own lethal notion of sisterhood and by the night that a Nazi bomb destroyed the entire street, and uncovered one of those poisonous lies.