Little Town Lies [Hardcover]

Anne Strieber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2005

Sally Hopkins was a social worker for the State of Texas. Worn out, burned out, she calls up her uncle Ed, sheriff of the small East Texas town of Maryvale, to find out if she can come and stay with him for a while. Much to her surprise, Ed not only wants her to visit, he has work for her. The town has been plagued over the summer by a series of arsons and animal mutilations. Chilled, Sally agrees to take the job. These are two of the signs of a budding serial killer, and it's crucial that the perpetrator be identified and stopped before he moves on to even more serious crimes.

But within a week of Sally's arrival in town, a woman is killed, the town's first murder in decades. The investigation turns from looking for a troubled boy who likes to torture cats into a desperate search for a killer who is sure to strike again.

Strieber takes us below the surface of small town life, to the dark undercurrents of suffering and depravity. With an appealing and engaging heroine, she builds the suspense page by page, creating a novel that is at times warmly funny, and utterly terrifying. Little Town Lies is a classic psychological mystery from a bright new talent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Murder, child sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, kinky sex and more seethe under the homey veneer of the little East Texas town of Maryvale in Strieiber's ungainly second novel (after 2004's An Invisible Woman). Social worker Sally Hopkins leaves her Houston-based job and heads "home" to Maryvale to lick her wounds and try to find peace in the only place she ever felt happy in her rough childhood. At her request, Sally's Uncle Ed, the local sheriff, gives her a job and a chance to contribute her expertise, though this expertise seems to derive from elementary psychology texts rather than experience or insight. In addition, Sally's raw emotional baggage makes her an unlikely choice as either a social worker or (an untrained) member of the sheriff's department. Her rapid rise is even more unlikely as her first bumbling attempts to investigate a series of animal mutilations gets off to an inauspicious start. Most readers should be well ahead of Strieiber's dithering heroine in figuring out most of the lies and secrets behind Maryvale's placid exterior.
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Review

"Incredibly exciting, fast-paced, and involving, An Invisible Woman puts Anne Strieber in the class of writers like Nora Roberts and Sandra Brown. Like them, she imbues her thrilling rollercoaster of a story with lots and lots of heart."--Peter Straub


"This entertaining thriller pits a Fifth Avenue matron against a shattering conspiracy that blurs the line between friend and foe. Upper-crust New Yorker Kealy Ryerson receives an urgent call from her lawyer husband to grab the kids and run. Overnight, all she has known and loved has become sinister. As Ryerson's comfortable world crashes around her Kealy discovers that without the glitter and makeup that's her usual uniform, a middle-aged woman can simply disappear."--Publishers Weekly on An Invisible Woman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (October 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765310945
• ISBN-13: 978-0765310941
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,343,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cozy or not cozy?, July 29, 2007

By 

Foggy Tewsday - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Town Lies (Mass Market Paperback)

Sometimes, a book will fail to grab my attention and have me wondering whether or not it's worth continuing to read it. If I don't like a book, I abandon it and go on to something else. `Little Town Lies' is a book that, on balance, I decided to persevere with. It just about warrants three stars in my opinion, but I did not find it an absorbing or compelling story. However, I did want to find out what how things would end, so I suppose it must have had something going for it.

The story follows social worker, Sally Hopkins. She is at a turning point in her life: about to hit forty and bored with her career and lack of social life in Houston, she decides to return to her hometown of Maryvale in Texas. Her uncle is Maryvale's sheriff and he offers Sally a job. The town is bedevilled with acts of animal mutilation, murder and child abuse and suddenly, Sally is advising the police on the likely profiles of the culprits. Now, this strikes me as a little unbelievable. Admittedly, I'm no expert in social work or police profiling, but is it really likely that someone of Sally's background would be qualified to perform such a job?

It's also difficult to tell what readership this novel is aimed at. It seems to be a straight-ahead thriller one minute before veering off into cozy mystery territory with its romantic angle and relationship issues. Not that I've got anything against cozy mysteries or romances: I read plenty of both types of fiction myself. However, the content of `Little Town Lies' is quite nasty and does not fit into the cozy realm very comfortably.

The novel's author, Anne Strieber, is a fine writer. In my opinion, she could be successful as a thriller writer (with better material), or a cozy mystery writer, but not both in the same book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just awful, February 15, 2006

By 

Mary F. Chmiel (Central Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Town Lies (Hardcover)

Superficial, trite and predictable. What about this book isn't preposterous? A social worker somehow morphing into a serial killer profiler? The protagonist's self-pitying attitude coupled with her fantastic leaps of logic? Every thought that springs into Sally's head is taken as fact, with no substantiation, and after a while the improbability of all these "thoughts" just becomes wearying. There is no character development, no insight and scene transitions are handled in a clumsy and confusing way. A BIG disappointment.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sophmore Book......A Success, January 29, 2006

By 

M. Jacobs "JacobsFamily4" (Daytona Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Town Lies (Hardcover)

I think her sophmore attempt out was better than her first. Do not get me wrong, her first book was incredible. If any of you know this woman's backstory you would be amazed. She is a strong woman who writes very well. The copy I have is signed and I will be holding on to it because I feel she will only get better! She keeps you on your toes. I was so wrong about the end of this book. I figured it differently. I loved it. Please indulge yourself and buy this book. I truly took every free moment I had to read this book. I received it as a gift and am eagerly awaiting her third book. Just a side note, her husband is Whitley Strieber and he writes many books as well.