Tell No Lies is the thirteenth novel by Greg Hurwitz, who has also written for Marvel and DC comics, including the likes of Batman: The Dark Knight. The story tells the tale of Daniel Brasher who is working for the city of San Francisco as a group therapist for parolees. Due to a series of events, Daniel finds himself thrust into the middle of a fast paced murder investigation aiding the lead detective of the case Theresa Dooley.
I’d recommend this novel to fans of fast paced, easy to digest crime thrillers. I wouldn’t classify this novel so much as a whodunit due to its premise of the story and the limited characters allowing the reader to make educational guesses throughout the story progression as to the culprit. The crux to the story instead relies on the inquiry of what is the series of events that lead to murder spree, and exactly why the protagonist (Daniel Brasher) seems to have gotten himself caught up in the middle of it.
Gregg Hurwitz for his part as the author does fairly well with establishing the primary protagonist and then delivering the reader into the meat of the story without dragging his feet in overly constructing characters. Hurwitz keeps the chapters short in the beginning in order to keep the pace of the story moving forward and deliver the reader to the action in a timely manner.
Daniel Brasher is a well constructed protagonist who you have no trouble rooting for throughout the story. The secondary characters of the six parolees that are the main protagonist group therapy members are fairly well constructed. Hurwitz seem to understand the characters background and establish each of these characters with their own voice. The only characters I personally didn’t care for (but also didn’t quite hate) where the protagonist mother and main detective Theresa Dooley who at point had me thinking they where caricatures of character types that we have seen before.
The overall plot is entertaining, but it is also not without both strengths and pitfalls. The premise of the story to start had me questioning the validity of the protagonists involvement, but as the story progressed so did my acceptance of the situation. The authors decision to keep the chapters short I felt for the most part was the correct exercise in a novel of this type, however he could have benefited from not limiting himself to short chapters all the time. he should have allowed himself extra pages for action sequenced, because due to these short chapters it sometimes felt resolution came too swiftly. It was also obvious the author had personal ties to the setting of San Francisco which sometimes worked in his favor, but also had points where is was a bit to heavy handed and detracted from certain situations.
Overall, if you are a fan of this genre it would be in your best interest to check out this novel, as well as the rest of Gregg Hurwitz body of work.