Narrated by Michelle Ford
I’ll admit that I picked up Ring of Lies mainly because it’s narrated by Michelle Ford, someone whose work I’ve listened to and enjoyed on several occasions. The story synopsis tells of a woman who, after the death of her husband, gradually discovers that he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be – not an uncommon plotline, but one with potential for plenty of drama and twists if handled well. Unfortunately, however, that isn’t the case here; the plot is thoroughly predictable, the pacing is pedestrian and I’d figured out probably the most important piece of information within the first hour, while it took the hero and his FBI buddies almost the entirety of the book’s eight-and-a-half-hour running time to do the same.
Grace and Daniel Elliott had their ups and downs throughout their ten-year-marriage, just like other couples, and when Daniel is killed in a car crash, Grace is devastated. In the days leading up to his funeral, Grace has tried desperately to get in touch with her sister Catherine, her only living relative, to let her know what’s happened, but Catherine is not answering her phone and doesn’t return Grace’s calls. Worried about her sister as well as grieving for her husband, Grace is exhausted by the day of the funeral, noticing little other than the fairly small gathering and a man she doesn’t recognise standing on the peripheries. When the ceremony comes to an end, the last thing she expects is for the man to grab her and demand she turns over the computer files Daniel kept for him and to imply that Daniel was involved in something sinister. Confused and somewhat afraid, Grace tells him she has no idea what he’s talking about and, after a cryptic comment about Catherine, he leaves.
There are more shocks in store for Grace when she visits their solicitor to discover the contents of Daniel’s will. They’ve never been well-off; their house is mortgaged, Grace’s car is several years old, and they have to budget carefully – so she is astonished to discover that Daniel had recently purchased a house on Gasparilla Island in Florida and that he has left it to her. Unable to quite take it in and wondering how on earth Daniel had been able to afford such a thing, she returns home where she receives the last of Daniel’s personal effects, the now battered briefcase she’d given him years earlier. There’s nothing of particular interest in it – only some work files – until she notices that there’s something underneath the lining and unearths a passport and a piece of paper with a string of numbers written on it… and while the passport has her husband’s photograph in it, it’s not in the name of Daniel Elliott, but that of Lionel Lattide – whom she’s never heard of.
Grace needs answers, and fortunately, she knows someone who can help her to get them. Six months earlier, she had met Jack West, an FBI agent who was temporarily attached to the US Embassy in London. They met at Wimbledon where they had seats next to each other for a week of the tournament and ended up spending quite a lot of time together – but even though they were strongly attracted to each other, things never went further between them than friendship. Grace calls Jack at his home in Florida to ask for his help and even though he’s in the midst of a tricky personal situation, he agrees to meet her flight and see what can be done.
The story unfolds fairly predictably as Jack and Grace work together to uncover the truth about Daniel and his double life as the attraction between them blossoms. Grace is surprised when Daniel’s American attorney indicates they’ve met before and then is even more puzzled when, on arrival on the island one of the locals refers to her as Mrs. Lattide. Grace puts the question from her mind, but once she and Jack arrive at the house, and she’s confronted with a wardrobe full of women’s clothes, she can no longer deny that Daniel must have been having an affair – or that their life together had been a lie.
Ring of Lies is the sort of run-of-the-mill romantic thriller I suspect we’ve all read/listened to/watched on TV several times before. The listener is several steps ahead of the characters pretty much from the start, and the already ambling pace is further slowed at various points by the inclusion of a few chapters from the villains’ points of view, in which we’re given superfluous background information about them. Jack’s personal situation – his former girlfriend Rosa has recently had their baby and shows no interest in her whatsoever while Jack is working hard to do the right thing and make a home for them – is the most unusual and potentially interesting aspect of the story, but it falls down courtesy of the rather stereotypical presentation of Rosa as a selfish, heartless bitch who only went through with the pregnancy in the hope of getting Jack to marry her. I also wasn’t wild about the fact that Grace finds out about the baby and assumes Jack is married – but she doesn’t confront him about it, and is quite happy to engage in some heated kisses while she is under this impression – although by the time of the book’s single sex scene, he’s cleared things up and there’s no actual cheating going on.
The secondary characters – especially Jack’s boss – are broadly drawn but likeable, and Jack makes an engaging – if stereotypical – hero, but Grace is a bit of a wimp. She has panic attacks at the drop of a hat (and the most inconvenient moments) and for a woman of thirty-two, is incredibly naïve and rather dim. That she fails to see what’s staring her in the face regarding the identity of “Mrs. Lattide” is annoying, but the fact that everyone else is wearing the same blinkers is completely ridiculous – don’t FBI agents have to be clever and pass tests and that sort of thing?
I said at the outset that I picked up Ring of Lies mostly because of Michelle Ford’s involvement. She’s an accomplished and experienced narrator and I’ve rated her performances highly in the past, but I’m afraid I can’t do so this time. While Grace is British (as is Catherine) the bulk of the story takes place in Florida and most of the characters are American or Hispanic – and though Ms. Ford doesn’t have any problems with giving the Hispanic characters an appropriate accent, it’s clear that a standard American accent is not her forté. She reads the narrative in her native British accent, and obviously performs Grace, Catherine and other Brits using it, but Jack and his various colleagues have a lot of dialogue, and I’m sorry to say their accents sound really fake. I have yet to hear an American accent as atrocious as the one used by Anna Parker Naples in The Royal Conquest and I hasten to add that Ms. Ford’s is nowhere near that bad. But still, if it was difficult for me to hear, I can imagine it would be even moreso for those of you who are stateside. Pacing in narrative and dialogue is fine, and Ms. Ford’s character differentiation is generally good; she doesn’t use much variation in pitch to perform the male characters, but she manages to make them sound suitably masculine, and apart from the dodgy accent, Jack sounds like the honourable, attractive hero he is.
But it’s not enough to turn Ring of Lies into an audiobook I can recommend.
Caz
Buy Ring of Lies by Victoria Howard on Amazon
