JOHN HART

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about the book
The King of Lies is John Hart’s first novel. It has been selected as an Editor’s Pick by the Mystery Guild and as a Featured Alternate by the Doubleday Book Club, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and Smart Reader Rewards.

In addition to the United States, it will be published in Spain, Japan, Germany, Italy, Holland, France, Brazil, Russia, The Ukraine, Israel, Poland, Denmark, England and Bulgaria.

An audio version from Recorded Books will be available in May of 2006. The book is also being adapted as a feature film.

From Flap Cover
A year after his mother's death and his father's mysterious disappearance, Jackson Workman Pickens---known to most as "Work"---is still fighting the fallout from his tortured past. His law practice is a shambles, a far cry from the legal empire that his father, Ezra Pickens, left in his care the day he vanished; his socialite wife, Barbara, is content to spend her days at the country club; and both Work and Barbara ignore the passionless nature of their failing marriage. Work's life is almost pleasantly unfulfilling.

The discovery of Ezra's murdered body changes everything.

Values are challenged, assumptions are questioned, and when the police learn of the vast fortune left in Ezra's wake, Work is no longer just a victim, he's a prime suspect---and so is his sister, Jean. While Work's life has been shadowed by his powerful, domineering father, Jean's life has been all but destroyed by him. Yet as damaged as she may be, is she capable of patricide?

Fearing the worst for Jean, Work launches his own investigation, crossing paths with a power-hungry detective, a string of damning evidence, and the ugly rumors that swirl within his small and moneyed Southern town.

As his sister comes undone, and the evidence against Work mounts, his long-standing emotional dam crumbles, and he must fight from beneath the torrent of secrets, lies, and childhood trauma that threatens to drown him.

Desperate for the redemption that has eluded him for so many years and stripped of everything he once valued, he fights to save his sister, clear his name, and regain the love of the woman to whom he gave his heart so many years before.

The King of Lies is a rare debut---a mystery wrapped in the Southern drawl of a humble North Carolina lawyer; it's both poignant and thrilling. John Hart's mastery of prose and plot belies his newcomer status as he explores the true heart of a man in this extraordinary anatomy of a murder and its ripple effect within a family and a community.