She Treads Softly: 3 Truths and a Lie

Sunday, December 27, 2015

3 Truths and a Lie

3 Truths and a Lie by Lisa Gardner

Penguin Publishing Group: 1/5/16
eBook review copy; 52 pages
ISBN-13: 9781101984888
A Detective D. D. Warren Short Story

3 Truths and a Lie by Lisa Gardner is a very highly recommended short story featuring Detective D.D. Warren. There are also two chapters from Gardner's upcoming book, Find Her, being published on February 9, 2016.

In this short story Detective D.D. Warren is facing a room full of mystery writers. She agreed to teach a fifty minute class at a Police Academy Writer's Conference on the realities of police work. Her husband, Alex, advises her that the group will like things bloody and gory. She decides that the class will be playing a game of three truths and a lie. The case she decides to share is one that features a seedy motel room, drugs, prostitution, and a severed leg. As Warren discloses the police procedures used to follow the clues to find out what really happened, she also asks the class of writers questions about the case and what steps they think the police should take next.

This is a great short story and a good introduction to Gardner and her character, Detective D.D. Warren. While it is a short story, it will hold your attention, beginning to end, and the case is fascinating. It's also nice to have the preview of Gardner's upcoming novel.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the Penguin Publishing Group via Netgalley for review purposes.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.