The Telling Of Lies

Timothy Findley is a former actor and radio performer and scriptwriter from Canada who has written one incredible novel (_Not Wanted On the Voyage_) and quite a few good ones. There is no such thing as a "characteristic" Findley novel, and this is no exception. With _The Telling Of Lies_, the author takes on the murder mystery genre, but of course it's not your typical mystery. It takes place on the south coast of Maine, at a resort hotel with an assortment of characters. The narrator/protagonist, a middle-aged woman, not only tackles and solves the mystery, but intersperses the main plot with memories of her experiences in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War.The story is well told. I liked this book better than _Famous Last Words_ (though it is a less complicated and momentous story) and _The Piano Man's Daughter_, about as much as _The Butterfly Plague_ and his memoir/essay collection _Inside Memory_, but not as much as his masterpiece, _Not Wanted On the Voyage_.