In “The Art of a Lie,” Laura Shepherd-Robinson takes us back to London in 1749, when women had few rights, and the clever ones learned to use their wits to survive. We meet Hannah Cole a few weeks after the murder of her husband, Jonas. The confectionary shop that had been in her family for generations is struggling now that suppliers have learned a woman is running the shop. They are overcharging her, and she’s not sure how long she’ll be able to stay in business.

The expertly created narrative is explicit in sharing how women were treated then. Hannah couldn’t sell any of the expensive fittings in the shop because word would get out. Her suppliers would want more money in advance, which she would have to borrow. Hannah’s father had warned against borrowing money, “But he’d never worn a widow’s weeds, never known how the world conspired to punish a woman for the crime of wanting to earn an honest living.”

The thought of losing her family’s shop is devastating to her. But when her husband’s closest relative—his cousin Daniel—informs Hannah that Jonas had the huge sum of fifteen hundred pounds in the bank, she is astounded. While Daniel, as the closest male heir, would receive most of the money, her third, in combination with her shop, would allow her to survive.

With Shepherd-Robinson’s exceptionally complex plot, there are horrors and terrible problems that Hannah, and others, must overcome. Then follow resolutions that seem to indicate a bright and secure future. And we ride this rollercoaster, up and down, through the whole novel. We slowly learn the truth of Hannah’s marriage. We slowly learn the truth about her husband. And we also learn a lot about William Devereux, the other main character.

Because the novel begins with Hannah narrating the events in first person, it’s a bit of a shock that in the second part of the book the narrator changes to Devereux. It’s brilliant because between the two narrators, Shepherd-Robinson convinces us that we know what is going on, while she is really superbly misdirecting us. Devereux tells Hannah he helped her husband with an investment, and together they investigate where Jonas obtained the money. But the motives in investigating the source of the funds are at odds with each other.

Tom Fielding, the novelist-turned-investigator and another character in the novel, is looking for Jonas’s killer, and he doesn’t think the killing was random. Was Jonas killed for that large sum of money? In the meantime, Devereux is winning Hannah’s heart. He told her about an Italian confection, iced cream. He went to great lengths to help her figure out how to make it. And it becomes hugely popular in her shop, giving Hannah hope that the shop might survive with her running it. But we soon find there is more on Devereux’s mind than just helping Hannah.

There are so many lies, so many actors with agendas, that reading Hannah’s narrative, and then Devereux’s narrative, is akin to watching a high speed tennis match, our heads constantly moving from one side to the other to keep track of the ball. But the ball we think is in play is really not what we should be watching.

In addition to her masterfully conceived, intricately woven plots, what makes Shepherd-Robinson’s books so memorable are the characters she creates. Both of the main characters are really flawed people, but we also wonder if they are, at heart, really good people who have been forced to respond to really terrible circumstances. Would we have been any different in their shoes?

And the ending is exceptional. It’s quite the feat to leave us feeling both heart-warmed and bereft at the same time. We are left wondering about the nature of love versus survival. To what lengths will someone in love go to protect the object of their affections? And we are left wondering about the true natures of both Hannah and Devereux, and considering whether or not we were hoodwinked by their actions.

Read her previous novel, “The Square of Sevens.”

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.