#bookreview Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent (@lizzienugent)

‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’

From Number 1 bestselling author Liz Nugent, comes her much anticipated second novel Lying in Wait. Published by Penguin Ireland, Lying in Wait will be available from 7th July. I received my copy via writing.ie in exchange for an honest review.

The last people who expect to be meeting with a drug-addicted prostitute are a respected judge and his reclusive wife. And they certainly don’t plan to kill her and bury her in their exquisite suburban garden.

Yet Andrew and Lydia Fitzsimons find themselves in this unfortunate situation.

While Lydia does all she can to protect their innocent son Laurence and their social standing, her husband begins to falls apart.

But Laurence is not as naïve as Lydia thinks. And his obsession with the dead girl’s family may be the undoing of his own.

From the opening line, Lying in Wait hooked me in!!

‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’  

I was completely enthralled with this amazing piece of psychological suspense. Coming late to the table, having not read Unravelling Oliver, Liz Nugent’s previous bestseller, I had no idea or preconceptions of what to expect.

Lying in Wait is the story of a very ‘respectable’ family in Dublin society, the Fitzsimons. They appear to have it all – the money, the prestige, the mansion, the job – but all is not as it seems behind closed doors.

Financially, the family are in serious trouble due to ‘Bloody Paddy Carey‘, the family accountant and close friend, who has absconded with all their investments.

Lydia, Mrs. Fitzsimon, is a very complex lady living with delusions of granduer and a sense of complete ownership over her poor son Laurence ‘Nobody’s good enough for our Laurence’ and downtrodden husband, Andrew. Her role as the ‘lady of the manor’ is portrayed so well by Liz Nugent. Lydia will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

With no sympathy at all for the lower classes of society she continues to say ‘I like to think I did the girl a kindness, like putting an injured bird out of it’s misery. She (Annie Doyle) did not deserve such consideration.’

Laurence is a boy who never gets a chance just ‘to be’. His controlling mother and subservient father reduce him to a rather sad, lonely and confused individual.

‘I knew what it felt like to be ignored, but I wasn’t sure what it felt like not to be noticed. I imagine they are very different experiences.’

The lies, the deceit, the complete lack of normality in his life leaves the reader at times feeling sorry for Laurence but as he grows up, that feeling changes to one of frustration. Laurence, suffers from weight problems becoming a target for bullying and derision but his mother seems completely unaware of anything happening outside of her four walls, this fortress she has made for herself.

He suffers by himself as all others are dealing with issues like… how to hide a body and…his mother’s slow descent into madness!!

A major tragedy happens in his life which turns the mixed up world he lives in into an even stranger one. His life at the family residence, Avalon, changes forever.

Laurence decides to pursue Annie Doyle’s family in the hope of closure for his parent’s horrendous act but not without reverberating repercussions.

Lying in Wait tells the story from two different perspectives.

We have the wealthy Fitzsimons and we have the working class Doyles.

We are introduced to the Doyle family after the disappearance of their daughter Annie. Liz Nugent brilliantly describes the working class environment and the daily struggles they face. Their expectations for their children are no different than anybody else. They just want them to be settled and happy.

But the day they discover Annie isn’t coming home, is the day their life changes forever. Karen, the younger sister, decides to leave no stone unturned in the search for Annie, leading her down a very strange road to some very unexpected places.

I loved this book in every way.

I loved the fact that the book was broken into character chapters.  Each chapter allowing each individual character to tell us their story, how they saw things unfold.

The book is also spread out over the course of a number of years, conveying the dominance of Lydia as she progresses through her life of seclusion and her rather twisted methods of keeping Laurence by her side.

This is a book you will not want to finish, because to finish means you now have to wait for Liz Nugent to publish a third novel.

But for me, I still have Unravelling Oliver to read so that should tide me over!!

Meet the Author:

Liz was born in Dublin in 1967, where she now lives with her husband, musician and sound engineer Richard McCullough.

Since first writing for broadcast in 2003, Liz has gone from strength to strength. Between 2003 and 2013, Liz worked as a Story Associate on the popular television soap opera Fair City. She had several pieces accepted for Sunday Miscellany, a radio series on RTE Radio 1 specialising in whimsical and nostalgic autobiographical pieces.
Subsequently, she had two children’s stories accepted by the Fiction 15 series for the same broadcaster.

In 2006, her first short story for adults, Alice, was shortlisted for the Francis McManus Short Story Prize.
Liz went on to write a children’s animation series called The Resistors for TG4. Her half-hour drama, An Coinne was one of four winners chosen to be broadcast live on TG4 in the Irish language in the Seomra Sé series.
Liz’s radio drama, Appearances,represented Ireland at the New York Festivals in 2008. She was the winner of an EATC bursary and writing workshops in Geneva and Berlin for pilot episode of drama series Campus in 2007.

Liz’s first novel Unravelling Oliver was published to critical and popular acclaim in March 2014. It quickly became a firm favourite with book clubs and reader’s groups. In November of that year, it went on to win the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Book Awards and was long listed for the International Dublin Literature Prize 2016. She was also the winner of the inaugural Jack Harte Bursary provided by the Irish Writers Centre and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Dec 2014.

Aside from writing, Liz has led workshops in writing drama for broadcast, she has produced and managed literary salons and will curate the literary strand of Skibbereen Arts Festival in July 2016.

Her second novel, Lying in Wait, is to be released into the wild on July 7th. Liz is a nervous wreck.