Believe Me by J.P. Delaney

All you need to remember after you pick up this psychological thriller is that CLAIRE is an actress. From Britain, now in NYC, she can't work legally while taking acting classes at Actors Studio. So she needs a job that pays cash to supplement her scholarship. Claire explains that, as an orphan who was shuttled from place to place in foster care, she learned the art of "behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances." And, "It's what you imagine that defines you as a character."

So she gets a job acting as a decoy to tempt husbands to stray. She's very good at her role, but one night she is hired to lure the wrong man -- who is disinterested and preoccupied with his academic work -- the translation and teaching of the work of Charles Baudelaire. Patrick Folger is enamored of a particular book of Baudelaire's poetry, LES FLUERS DU MAL -- which happens to be morbid erotica after a fashion. When he departs without falling for Claire's enticements, she meets his wife, Stella, who had hired her through a law firm that Claire works for. Unfortunately, Stella ends up dead in her hotel room the next morning. Who killed her? Along with the murder, there is money missing. At first, Claire is a suspect, but then she is hired to pursue Patrick because the police believe he might have murdered his wife and that he is, in fact, a serial killer. There's the premise in a nutshell.

NO SPOILERS. Claire agrees to go undercover and assume the acting role of a lifetime. Be beware -- Claire is not entirely reliable as a narrator and the reader is never sure if she is being real or acting -- or even if Claire can tell the difference between the two.

The prose has an unusual style, written at times like a screenplay. While fitting for the subject matter, it was a little odd at first. The game of cat and mouse is such that, while you are drawn in with questions, you become less sure of what is going on as the book progresses. Definitely you will need to suspend disbelief as some of what happens seems completely unrealistic or likely to happen as described. I didn't really care for the ending and not sure that I really liked this book though it definitely held my interest well enough that I didn't want to put it down.

So, ultimately, should you read it? Depends on your BS meter and your ability to get into a character such as Claire. The details about Baudelaire and his poetry were quite interesting and macabre. I'd like to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this e-book ARC to read and review. Looking forward to hearing others' opinions and thoughts on this second novel that I've read by this author.

Standalone, not part of a series.