Actor Dair has always made life a little more interesting. Okay, some people would call what she does lying, but embellishment makes everything a little more sparkly, and it's become something of a way of life for her. It's part of what makes her a good actor, particularly at improv. She doesn't lie to Peyton, her husband, though. Well, not about big things. Except her drinking, and except the biggest lie of all, the one that brought them together, and that haunts her whenever Peyton speaks with her parents, and whenever her birthday draws near.
Dair was working on a good embellishment for why she was running late to pick Peyton up from the airport when she saw a woman in a familiar purple dress running blindly across the highway. Obviously terrified, and a man, Dair realises, she instinctively locks the door. The man leaps over the guard railing, hovers, then falls to his death - a far more dramatic excuse than any Dair could have come up with on her own.
When she discovers the dead man is Craig, a close actor friend and boyfriend of their neighbour, Marielle, she has to find out what happened. And the deeper she gets the more the lies she's told those around her, the lies she tells herself, and the secrets of those she loves, need to be confronted.
This was an absorbing and fascinating novel that successfully combined a strong murder mystery with self-exploration and self-knowledge, addiction and temptation, past lives and reincarnation, animal totems and imagery, communication between people and between people and animals, trust and faith, hope and love, despair and redemption, and the nature of truth, into a satisfying, convincing and cohesive whole.
I was drawn to the title of Two Truths and a Lie, which I found randomly at the library - it refers to a game Dair plays with children in an acting class: tell three facts, two of which are true and one which is a lie. I so enjoyed it that it's only the stack of books I already have to work through, not to mention school work, that's stopping me from checking out Kittle's other work. - Alex
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