The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Timy reviews The Art of a Lie, a standalone historical fiction novel by Laura Shepherd-Robinson.

An eARC was provided by Mantle in exchange for an honest review.

Possible fit for The Sound of Madness Reading Challenge 2025 prompts:

Joker prompt that goes with anything: Freed from Desire

The Art of a Lie is a beguiling cat-and-mouse thriller from The Sunday Times bestselling author of The Square of Sevens, Laura Shepherd-Robinson.

That’s the trouble with stories, especially the ones you write for yourself. Sometimes you think they’ve ended, when they’ve barely begun . . .

London, 1749. Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. The Punchbowl and Pineapple, her confectionary shop on Piccadilly, is barely turning a profit. Henry Fielding, the famous author and new magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account, because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop – if only she can learn how to make it. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything, even her husband’s murder.

“Rather bewildered by this onslaught of metaphor, I wished I had more confidence in Twisleton’s judgement. His pleasure of choicem whenever he came into the Punchbowl and Pineapple, was a large nugget of Holland candy, the crystallised sugar containing glittering fragments of angelica, pistachio, ginger and chocolate – treasures to be mined from their sweet bedrock by a determined tongue. It is confection for a man who takes a child’s delight in the world, and I envied Twisleton his optimism about human nature, even as I scorned it.”

In recent years I had become a huge fan of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, and of course I was eagerly waiting for her latest novel. And it did not disappoint.

The story in The Art of a Lie is told from two POVs – we have Hannah Cole, the owner of a confectionery shop, whose husband was found dead due to a robbery gone wrong. He only left behind debts, so Hannah is doing her best to keep her family’s business going. And we have William Deveroux, a friend of late Mr. Cole who takes a liking to Hannah and inspires her to find out the secret to ice cream, making it an instant hit with London’s society.

But as it happens when you are reading a Shepherd-Robinson novel, nothing is quite as it seems. I’m not going to spoil any of the plot, but you are in for a ride. I loved how we learned about both Hannah’s and William’s secrets pretty early on, while they had no idea about the other’s, which made it so much more fun to read. With every piece of puzzle put in its place, I kept turning the pages so I could find out how things would play out in the end. Disaster was bound to happen and it did magnificently. Although I probably shouldn’t say that about other people’s tragedies. Still, I marveled at how Shepherd-Robinson wove the plot together, making every character coming alive on the pages.

But not just the characters, London too. I always find historical fiction fascinating because of the little details, reading about places I know now. About some customs and inventions that feel so out of place now. Today it seems funny how people revered pineapples to the point it was a mark of luxury. And ice cream! If you want to know more about the receipt mentioned in the book, I’d like to point you to Laura Shepherd-Robinson‘s BlueSky thread about her experiment with it!

I know I didn’t talk about the book as much as I usually do, but this is one of those occasions where I think the less you know the better you will savour it. It doesn’t happen that often that I do nothing but sing praises of a book in a review, but I can’t help myself. The Art of a Lie is just another delightful masterpiece that deserves all the praise it can get. It’s going to be hard to push this one down from the top of my favorite books of 2025.