When Veronica “Vonny” Kwan wakes up in a Nevada hospital after being hit by a car she is convinced that it is 2013 when in fact it is 2022. She has no idea how or why she ended up in this particular town. There’s a nine year gap in her memory but as new facts emerge she becomes all the more confused. Cops visit her investigating the recent death of a husband she has no recollection of. Her best friend from 2013 no longer wants to talk to her. She is returned to a grand mansion in San Francisco with a Rolls Royce and a Lamborghini in the garage. A stranger in her own home she is haunted by dreams of being followed. When the police arrive to arrest her on suspicion of her husband’s murder the nightmare begins to escalate. And then a memory is triggered…

Danielle M. Wong’s LAST LIAR STANDING begins with a sweat inducing, thrillingly claustrophobic opening where Wong manages to build a state of nervous panic into something as everyday as checking into a motel. Vonny Kwan appears to be on the run. She is full of secrets and has done “something” yet at this stage the reader doesn’t know what. Or indeed why she is so troubled by simply being seen in public in the lobby of a motel. What follows, in this relentlessly paced mystery thriller, are numerous twists, turns and switchbacks that prove so gripping that it would be difficult not to read the book in one sitting. Written in short chapters, which frequently end on a cliff hanger, Wong wrings the most amount of drama and tension from the familiar trope of the seemingly confused amnesiac trapped in the eye of a storm which they can neither comprehend or control. It’s a grade A neo-noir, unafraid to lean into the pulp-ish tone of an unreliable first person narration nor shy away from the slightly stretched credulity of the overriding plot.

There are a few dead ends and a few red herrings. A few carefully signposted signals for what is yet to come, notably the olfactory references, not quite Proustian in their effect, but indicating that Wong has carefully planned out this convoluted tale from the start. And amongst the helter-skelter of the plot there are even moments to consider what memory means and how it defines a person. In places it’s slightly repetitive, as if perhaps the author skipped the final edit where all of the superfluous reminders of her protagonist’s lost memory could themselves have been erased but that’s a minor criticism. LAST LIAR STANDING is a thoroughly entertaining page turner.

With LAST LIAR STANDING, Danielle M. Wong delivers a breathless, fast-paced mystery full of twists and turns that hooks the reader from the very first page and demands to be read in a single sitting.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader