'The Last Lie' is slow-moving story of deceit

Stephen White has a story to tell. But he's not going to tell you until you spend hours listening to how he got there.

"The Last Lie" is the 18th installment of White's series about clinical psychologist Alan Gregory.

Alan lives in the mountains of Boulder, Colo. His world is disrupted when celebrity couple Mimi and Mattin Snow move next-door. The Snows' housewarming party turns disastrous when a woman claims she was raped at the gathering.

Alan's wife, Lauren, is a district attorney on the case. His best friend, Sam, is a detective investigating it. Alan's co-worker Diane is a good friend of the Snows, and Hella Zoet, a young psychologist supervised by Alan, is the alleged victim's therapist.

Through little slices of information from his different sources, Alan begins to piece together a theory about what happened that night. And through some not-so-honest investigating, Alan begins unraveling a much larger story about the Snows.

"The Last Lie" has good action and tells an interesting mystery. However, the story could have been written in less than 100 pages. White uses the other 300 to stuff in as much banter as possible.

White can be funny, but he relies too heavily on his quips. By the time the book is at the halfway mark, the characters -- and the reader -- are exhausted by too much information.

Online:

http://www.authorstephenwhite.com/