Title: The Lies You Wrote
Author: Brianna Labuskes
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Fiction
What It's About: Raisa Susanto, a linguist for the FBI, makes a guess at which of the male FBI agents are the ones that wrote a particular message on the message board at the FBI office. It is a parlor trick that she uses when working with some of the more skeptical agents, who may not see the value of the linguistic field in their work. She's found that after Scottsdale that she's had to prove her worth even more as she has messed up big time in the case.
At that moment, Kilkenny, one of the FBI's psychologists walks by and when she finishes her parlor trick, he asks to talk to her. They find a separate room, and he asks her if she is working another case to which she responds no. He tells her about this video and shows it to her--it is a graphic video posted on Flik, identified by one of the moderators there working on the graveyard shift. It reminds her of the brutal murder of the Parker family in Everly, Washington. She agrees to go with Kilkenny.
They drive to Everly, Washington, and meet with all of the other agents, including a civilian--Delaney, who was the content moderator at Flik that flagged that video and also has a program that trawls through the internet for different patterns that would be useful to the FBI. Raisa is suspicious of Delaney from the get-go as she feels like Delaney is hiding something.
Delaney and Raisa get paired to work together and Kilkenny joins them. Raisa has a lot of questions about Delaney and how she knew what the black box was in the video--a tombstone, which is a mathematical symbol.
Delaney had gone to school as a teenager, and being gifted, she went to college at fourteen, where one of her professors hit on her. He later was found dead of an overdose. She had an agreement with her parents that she would go to a community college and not Stanford, though they thought she should use hr full potential. Delaney also had a situation at school, where she wanted to be friends with a girl and the girl had used her for cash. The girl was later found dead of alcohol poisoning. Delaney used her computer skills and trawled the internet finding bad people, and anonymously tipping the FBI man off about them. In one case, they had a pimp on which they had no evidence to go after him, and Delaney took a walk, wondering whether he should be killed.
Jenna Shaw, a podcaster comes to town and Kilkenny and Raisa talk to her in a busy diner so that even if she records them, the information would be useless. They ask Jenna questions as she seems to know the Parker case fairly well, and ask her who could be the next target after the Balduccis. Jenna tells them that it could be Terri Harden, the social worker. Sure enough, Jenna is spot on and Terri is found dead. Kilkenny and Raisa round up Jenna and take her to the interrogation room. Raisa listens in and then decides that she would have better use out of trying to read more of the forums. She meets Shawn, Isabel Parker's ex-boyfriend and he angrily tells her he's been fired. She commandeers the sheriff's office and notices a picture of the woman with Tim Parker, but it has a portion of it ripped away as if purposefully done to hide the remaining individuals out of the pictures. Delaney comes and they do not find more though Raisa still feels suspicious of Delaney.
Kilkenny and Raisa talk to the assistant professor who worked under Tim Parker, and he tells them that a lot of the gossip written about the Parkers was just that--rumours--and that Beck Parker had gone to the owners of the newspaper to ask them to stop printing the Everly Ear, but that it was drumming up too much business for them. He also tells them the name of the girl who accused Tim of stealing her work--Talia.
When they return, Delaney has figured out the next victim--a dentist in town who was formerly the Deputy Sheriff. Raisa and Kilkenny talk to him and find that his home is indeed bugged. Raisa is certain that there is no way Delaney would've guessed that person, even though it was because she was looking at people who neglected the Parker children. Raisa is convinced that Delaney is hiding things and is the real killer. Kilkenny does not want to be forthcoming, but defends Delaney and promises to tell Raisa when it gets dangerous. She feels the tentative friendship they had been building slip away, even after she reveals that she feels guilty after the loss of her parents because they had gone to a fair, and she wanted to go on a ride so badly that she went her separate way and then could not find them. Her parents were coming to pick her up from the police station when they were killed by a drunk driver.
When Raisa returns to her cabin, Delaney is still working there and she goes inside, calls up her friend--a researcher--to look into Delaney's background. Delaney overhears this and tells Raisa that she is not a monster, before leaving.
Delaney had been working late night shift when she made the plan--writing out the name of the Balducci's, Terri, and the former Deputy Sheriff. Lastly, she adds the name of Lane Parker, and returns to the Alex is innocent thread.
Raisa goes to the only pub in town and finds Shawn. He answers some questions about the Parkers. he also tells her to ask Greg Balducci about the night of the murders, insinuating that he might have something to do with it. Coincidentally, Greg is in town dealing with the funeral details for his parents.
The next morning, Raisa tells Kilkenny that she has other leads to follow and goes to the only coffee shop in town. Sure enough, Greg shows up and after confirming it is him, she saves him from the old ladies and they talk. Greg tells her that the fight that he and Alex got into at his parent's 4th of July party was over Cara James--the girl that Alex had assaulted sexually. They had both clammed up when the Deputy Sheriff showed up and was told by the Sheriff to not write either of the boys up. That was what made the Deputy Sheriff go and become a dentist. When she asks why would Shawn point a finger at him, Greg clams up and ends the conversation, throwing out her card to the trash on his way out.
Raisa goes back to the Sheriff's office and only the office worker is there--Amanda--who is very chatty, telling her that she used to babysit the girls. She tells Raisa a lot, but when asked about Beck, she doesn't have anything to say, though she does tense up. Raisa goes and finds all the archived boxes from the Parker case and in them, she finds journals and letters. Samantha, the sheriff comes by and the two talk with Samantha revealing that Beck was worried and that the girls were snuck out after the murders to give them a chance to live away from the limelight, so that reporters will not seek them out. But she admits, she has not kept track of them after everything and she would've loved to take them all in but not on her salary. She adds that they, and in she, in particular has blood on her hands. Raisa begins reading the journals.
She and Kilkenny meet with Talia in her home cabin, and Talia gives them the letter that was written about her proof being stolen by Tim. She also reveals that when she was staking out the Parker house, she did see a boy that looked like a road climbing into the house through a window in the roof. Raisa shows a her a picture of Greg and she agrees that its as him. Kilkenny realizes that Raisa met with Greg. They get into a disagreement about not being partners and/or accountable to each other.
A man turns himself in, claiming that he killed all these people. Raisa and Kilkenny try to convince their boss on this project that it is not this man because the man's idiolect doesn't match the killer's. The boss gives them some time to figure it out, but he starts taking agents off the case.
Then, Delaney disappears, shaking the agent assigned to her tail. Kilkenny finally tells Raisa the truth--Delaney had been the one who reached out to him; she had been an anonymous contact of his for years, and gave him leads. She had been the one that asked for Raisa to come on the case as a linguist, and they did a background check on her with nothing on her. They go back to the cabin and find that Delaney's stuff is gone. Raisa calls her friend, who tells her that he needs more time, but that Delaney was adopted in 1998 and there are no records of her before then. He also tells Raisa about two incidents of people dying--the professor during Delaney's only semester at college, and the friend at another school. Kilkenny gets on a call, and Raisa heads out to the bar, where she catches Greg. She guesses at a few things, and Greg takes her outside where he reveals that he had supplied the Balducci's sleeping pills to Isabel and then invited Alex to rile him up. He is telling her the truth now because he doesn't think his parents should have died as a result of his actions as a teenager. Raisa realizes that one of the Parker girls had killed the family, with Greg confirming as much. She and Kilkenny had said that the drugs did not make sense for a teenage boy, unless the murder was committed by a girl.
Delaney watched Raisa and Kilkenny look for her, and then as Raisa disappears through the woods. She follows Kilkenny in the car as he drives past the bar where Delaney sees Greg and Raisa, realizing by now that Raisa has by now found out the truth. She follows Kilkenny to the library and climbs in through the window to the library.
Raisa in the meantime returns to her cabin and pores over all the journals and letters realizing that everything points to Isabel and Isabel is...
But before she can get to her gun and pepper spray, Jenna shows up and forces her to walk into the woods, so Raisa knocks some things over so that when Kilkenny returns, he will know she did not leave willingly. Jenna reveals that she was the lady from the fair, and uses her voices which Raisa recognizes. She tells her that she did not mean for her parents to die but that she had wanted to meet her. At the time she went by the name Bella. She reveals that she was behind the change in idiolect in the letters to make ti look like it was the baby sitter in Raisa's Scottsdale case. Jenna had wanted to see if it could be faked so that she could blame all these murders and deaths on her sister, Lane Parker.
Delaney comes into the library to see Kilkenny pore over old newspapers until he comes across an old picture of Tim and Sam with the girls. She finds herself face to face with the barrel of Kilkenny's gun. He tell her that Isabel is Jenna Shaw, and Delaney tells him the truth--about how Isabel was the one who killed their family and all the other people based on a journal that Delaney kept online. The two return to the cabin and find Raisa is gone. Kilkenny asks why Isabel wants Raisa and Delaney tells him that people forget that there were three sisters and sends him in the opposite direction.
She then finds Raisa holding a gun trained on Isabel/Jenna, having gotten Isabel surprised. Delaney reveals that she has known about Raisa because of Scottsdale. Raisa realizes that she is Larissa Parker, and Delaney is Lane Parker--the names so similar to the original ones to keep it similar enough so that kids that young could recognize it as their own. Delaney and Jenna talk, and Jenna shoots Raisa, who also shoots her in turn.
Several months later, Raisa has gone through physical therapy and Kilkenny kept checking in on her, feeling horrible that she almost lost her life because of him. The two of them go to court to watch Isabel's trial, because Delaney got out of being an accessory to murder due to her lawyers. And Isabel keeps looking over at them almost happily, which Raisa finds strange. A few moments later, news breaks--sent directly to Kilkenny that the Alphabet man stated that he did not kill Kilkenny's wife, Sheila. That has Kilkenny heading out of the courtroom because he had watched his murdered wife die in his arm, and then chased after Alphabet man to put him into jail. Raisa wonders how Isabel got the Alphabet Man to make such a confession, and vows to do whatever it takes to put Isabel behind bars for good.
My Thoughts: I was really fascinated by the linguistics and math aspect in this book, but the twists and turns that this book takes--it truly has a psychology aspect, so I really did enjoy it a lot. I loved the identity changes and how the girls were all connected to a "famous" murder (in quotes because it's purely fictional, I think!) that gave the appearance that their brother did it, when in reality it was the oldest sister. I'm curious to see how the series progresses.
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