Within seconds the laws of physics ruthlessly eviscerated the expectations of humanity. The first floor of Sincere’s was obliterated. One side of Wing On collapsed. A thousand people died instantly, or bled quickly to death. The hysterical survivors, insane with fear, screamed and stampeded through the forest of broken glass and dismembered bodies. Outside the corpse of the traffic policeman dangled from the electric wires overhead, like a gruesome marionette, directing the dance of death beneath him. A broken water main sent a bloody waterfall cascading into the street.
(from Heart of Lies, page 222 in the ARC)
In Heart of Lies, inspired by her husband’s family, M.L. Malcolm spins a morality tale of sorts centered on Leo Hoffman, a Hungarian whose ear for languages and desire to become a success in the aftermath of World War I cause him to get tangled in a web of crime. By agreeing to go on an errand for the chief of police of Budapest, Leo unintentionally gets involved in an international counterfeiting scheme that leaves one man dead and forces him to flee to Shanghai, where it is said that people in trouble can start again. He has to leave so quickly that he can’t say goodbye to Martha, the young German woman he’d just met and with whom he immediately fell in love.
With the help of a stolen necklace, Leo becomes a very wealthy man, and soon he is able to send for Martha. The two rub elbows with the most important people in Shanghai, yet they have eyes only for each other. But Leo’s newfound wealth is tied to some shady people, and his past threatens to ruin the seemingly wonderful life he has built. The Japanese invasion of Shanghai and Hitler’s increasing power in Europe leave Leo and Martha wondering where to turn when everything comes crashing down.
Heart of Lies is an exciting novel that takes readers on an adventure to Hungary, Paris, Shanghai, and New York from the post-World War I period to the early days of World War II. I enjoyed Malcolm’s writing style and found the book hard to put down. Although the criminal aspect early on wasn’t very developed, the story picked up when Leo began to amass his fortune in Shanghai. Leo is far from saintly, but I empathized with him as he struggled to do what was best for his family and keep himself alive at the same time. Martha seemed a bit flighty and I felt that her character could have been fleshed out a bit more, but her unconditional love for Leo was touching.
Even though I really enjoyed Heart of Lies, there were a couple of things that didn’t work for me. The point of view would shift for a couple of paragraphs, then shift back, with the thoughts of a character not in the scene suddenly interjected before focusing once again on the character who is the subject of the scene. Also, there were a few scenes that weren’t necessary, particularly the section told from Martha’s point of view after Leo leaves for Shanghai without warning. Since the book mostly is about Leo and doesn’t focus as closely on Martha anywhere else in the book, these scenes seemed out of place and the events that transpire within them could have been inserted elsewhere.
Nevertheless, Malcolm does an admirable job of both telling Leo’s story and setting it in the midst of war and the struggle to survive on all fronts. Heart of Lies is a captivating novel about a man who can’t seem to outrun his past mistakes, and readers will find themselves shaking their heads at Leo’s predicaments and feeling his pain. The interview with Malcolm at the back of the book suggests that a sequel is in the works, and while I don’t believe one is necessary, it would be interesting to see what comes next for these characters.
Thanks to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to participate in the Heart of Lies tour. To check out the rest of the tour dates, click here.
Disclosure: I received a copy of Heart of Lies from HarperCollins for review purposes. I am an Amazon associate.
© 2010 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.
Sounds interesting but the flaws seem like things that might really put me off.
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I guess it really just depends if those things really bother you. I mean, they were noticeable enough for me to mention them in my review, but they didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book.
–Anna
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I read a book sometime ago of someone who escaped to Shanghai and started over again and it was very good (just cant remember the name of the book but not this one!) This sounds interesting as well.
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If you happen to remember the name of the book, please come back and let me know!
–Anna
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I hate when shifts in POV occur without warning and make it hard to tell who is talking.
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I didn’t think it was too, too distracting in this case, but it was noticeable to me. I hope you’ll give the book a try anyway.
–Anna
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Oh no, shifting POVS, sometimes that works, other times it annoys me to pieces
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I hope you don’t let it bother you in this case because it didn’t detract at all from my enjoyment of the book!
–Anna
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Too bad it wasn’t better!
But also, welcome to your new home! I hope wordpress works better for you. My biggest complaint is that anything using java script is not allowed, and that eliminates a lot of cool things, but otherwise, it has been a good place to be!
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Thank you! I was having way too many problems in Blogger, especially lately, and I was really concerned that I’d lose my blog altogether. I hurried up and changed because I couldn’t access my blog in certain browsers (Firefox and Chrome, in particular). The War Through the Generations blog is on WordPress, so I was familiar with the dashboard.
Glad to hear you don’t have too many complaints.
–Anna
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I’ve read two reviews that felt similar to your thoughts too. I may have to pass on this one.
How do you like WordPress??? I may have to jump ship too….
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I hope you don’t pass on the book based on my discussion of the flaws because even though they were noticeable enough for me to mention them, I still really liked the book.
Since the War Through the Generations blog is on WordPress, I’m pretty familiar with how it works, which helped make the transfer easier. My Blogger profile has been broken for years, with no one in the help forums willing or able to help. Then a few days ago, I’d try to login through Firefox or Chrome and I kept getting redirected to a blank screen. Ditto for trying to post or edit anything. I was so scared that my blog was going to disappear, so I hurried and made the change. I still have a lot of tweaks on the horizon, but I’m happier for now.
–Anna
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Your new WP blog looks great! Have fun tweaking 🙂
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Thanks, Mary. I think I’ll be tweaking for quite awhile! Thanks again for all of your help.
–Anna
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Anna, I know you really enjoyed this book, overall. It sounds like something I’d also enjoy reading. Thanks for another great review.
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Thanks! I do hope you give it a try.
–Anna
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Anna,
I was just reading your post on blogger asking whether anybody knew how to automatically redirect from blogger to wordpress and I wanted to let you know that your readers are getting automatically redirected to new blog id… I hardly reached halfway through your “Diary of an Eccentric Has Moved!” post when I got redirected here… 🙂
Your new blog looks great…
– Arch
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Thanks so much, Arch! The lovely Dar sent me a link to a website that told me what code to insert in my Blogger template. And after many hours of Googling a solution to no avail, she found me a change that took less than 5 minutes!
–Anna
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This seems to be redirecting already because I tried to check out your blogspot and got halfway through reading your announcement about the move and I was then looking at the new blog!
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Great! Thanks for letting me know.
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Great imagery in your chosen quote, especially “Outside the corpse of the traffic policeman dangled from the electric wires overhead, like a gruesome marionette, directing the dance of death beneath him.” Does the bulk of the book also contain such charged writing?
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There are gems like that here and there, which is probably why I ended up enjoying the book overall.
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I think this book was originally published as Silent Lies. My copy has basically the same picture on the front. She also wrote a sequel, called Deceptive Intentions. I am still going to give my copy a try since I got it for free. Amazon had pretty good reviews for both of them.
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Yes, it was first published as Silent Lies. It says that in the ARC. I’ll have to read the sequel at some point because I really am curious about how it all plays out.
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Loved your review, Anna. I bought this book for my daughter several years ago when it was titled Silent Lies. I recently read it and loved it. Unlike you I appreciated the different perspective occasionally interspersed with the main story. My copy ended with ‘to be continued…’ Luckily my daughter had already bought Deceptive Intentions, which I started ready immediately after finishing Silent Lies. I think you NEED to read both. Here’s my review at A Reader’s Journal.
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I plan to read the sequel and some point, and I’ll be checking out your review shortly.
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I’m SO looking forward to reading this! Ms. Malcolm was so fascinating to talk to at BEA and this sounds like just the kind of book I’d enjoy.
Thanks for being part of the tour. 🙂
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I think it’s great that you had a chance to chat with her. I saw her at the HarperCollins party, but was too shy to approach her. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on the book.
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You gave a very favorable review to a book I was less than taken with. For some reason, it irked me to no end; my review will be up June 30, and I’d love to see what you think of my thoughts. It’s hard for me to give a bad review…
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I can see how this isn’t a book for everyone. Even though I liked it overall, I still had some issues with it. I look forward to reading your review.
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