While I’m up home visiting with family, Kevin Tipple has been working hard to bring you book reviews. I’m not familiar with today’s thriller author, Mark Stevens. Thank you, Kevin, for your review of No Lie Lasts Forever.
Mark Steven’s last book, The Fireballer, was a very good book. It was very
good, even though he did not have my team, the Texas Rangers, present in
the read that much and even had the wrong team winning the World
Series. That book touched on many things, not just baseball, and like his
Allison Coil Mystery series, was a mighty good read. So, when Mark
Stevens let me know he had a new book coming out and offered me a
reading copy, even though with my worsening health and everything else
here I had no idea if I would ever get to read it, I eventually accepted the
offer.
No Lie Lasts Forever: A Thriller takes readers to Denver in a complicated
tale of mystery, murder, treachery, and a lot more. Reporter Flynn Martin, a
television icon, is our heroine. Her dad was a legendary newspaper
reporter in Denver and the proverbial apple fell right at the base of that tree.
It is supposed to be her day off as the book opens.
But, her boss has reached out as a gunman is holding hostages and wants
a television reporter to be a go between for him and the police. Flynn was
not his choice, but she is available, and he will accept her as the go
between, if she agrees. Even though these days she is more known for her
projects on climate change and think pieces, she has a long history on the
police beat and has many contacts.
Grudgingly, with lives at stake, she gets involved only to have things go
horribly wrong through no fault of her own. In the violent and deadly
aftermath, she takes a lot of heat internally and publicly from the police and
average folks who have an opinion, shaped by the storm of media
coverage at rival networks and elsewhere, of what she did that fateful day.
Suspended and flooded with grief, she would like to be left alone to cope
with what has happened.
Instead, a long dormant serial killer decides he is going to involve her in his
quest to set the record straight. He wants credit for the three successful, as
he sees it, kills he got away with many years ago and how he has behaved
since. He does not want anyone placing a murder he did not commit on
him. PDQ was a legend in Denver and some believe he is back killing
again. He isn’t and wants his legend intact and not desecrated by an
imposter. He is very mad about somebody doing a very poor job of copying
him and wants Flynn to prove it wasn’t him. She is supposed to do that
without involving anyone else whether it be coworkers, family, or the police.
While the initial goal of preserving his legacy might have been achievable,
his ego drives him, as it does Flynn, and numerous other people in this
read. Mistakes and assumptions are made and things quite rapidly escalate
for everyone. A violent collision was and is inviable with its own rippling
aftermath.
No Lie Lasts Forever: A Thriller by Mark Stevens is one heck of a read.
Multifaceted and moving forward at a rapid pace, Flynn finds herself deeper
and deeper into a nightmare. It also reinforces my long held personal belief
that leaving the house is often a very bad idea in many more ways than
one.
My print ARC was provided by the author with no expectation of a review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2025
Kevin, I love your concluding sentence.
