Behind the Lie by Naymark, Emilya

NYPD detective turned small town PI Laney Bird is in a fight to save lives--including her own--when an explosion of deadly violence at a block party exposes the crimes simmering underneath her neighborhood's peaceful façade.

A transplant to the upstate New York hamlet of Sylvan, all Laney wants is a quiet life for herself and her son. But things rarely remain calm in Laney's life.
When one neighbor, a Russian immigrant, is shot, and his Ukrainian wife disappears--along with Laney's best friend--at her neighborhood summer block party, Laney will need all her skills as a PI to solve a mystery that reaches far beyond her small town.

As people closest to Laney fall under suspicion, the local authorities, and her colleagues, question her own complicity. And then there's fifteen-year-old Alfie, her complicated, enigmatic son, obviously hiding something. Even as Laney struggles to bury evidence of her boy's involvement, his cagey behavior rings every maternal alarm.

Laney's personal life unravels as she's drawn into her friend's dark secrets, and she must ask herself: how far would a wife and mother go to keep her family from ruin? One woman's desperation is another's downfall, and with treachery blazing hot as the searing summer sun, Laney realizes she and Alfie are in danger and she must fight to save lives, her own and her son's included.

Author: Emilya Naymark
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Published: 02/08/2022
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781643858920
Award: Edgar Allan Poe Awards - Nominee

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2021
Publishers Weekly 12/20/2021

About the Author
Emilya Naymark is the author of the novel Hide in Place, book 1 in the Sylvan series starring PI Laney Bird. Her short stories appear in A Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Secrets in the Water, After Midnight: Tales from the Graveyard Shift, River River Journal, Snowbound: Best New England Crime Stories 2017, and 1+30: THE BEST OF MYSTORY. When not writing, Emilya works as a visual artist and reads massive quantities of psychological thrillers, suspense, and crime fiction. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.