Review: Believe Me

Claire wants a job, but she cannot legally work because she is a British citizen here in the U.S. without a green card. She has to live, to eat, to get from place to place. What will she do? 

Claire works for an attorney. She tries to get married men to cheat on their wives -- and they do, frequently. Her roommate's father is urging her roommate to ask more and more money from Claire to pay for the rent. Claire does her best. She uses her acting skills and a somewhat checkered past in acting to get the goods on philandering husbands. But then she hooks up with another woman who wants to know what her husband is up to and it all goes wrong. 

She was supposed to be the husband's type and she did get his attention in the bar where they met, but he didn't bite. He told Claire he was married and walked away. Problem is that Claire is attracted to him and his wife is convinced he is a serial killer. But she likes him no matter what  his wife says. Claire believes him and she is willing to get closer to him, which is what the police and the profiler want. Claire wants that too, not only because she will hopefully end up with the charismatic professor but because she can prove his murdered wife wrong and vindicate him. Or she will end up back in Britain without her acting career and out of the United States without her promised green card. 

"Believe Me" is a slow chase through the deep, dark recesses of the mind with no way out for law abiding Claire and no trophy when she crosses the line. It will be her life versus her acting career, both of which will end without roses, and soon if she cannot find the right path through the mind maze before her. 

Delaney juggles with the facts and the reality with finesse and sends Claire and the reader down a long, dark road that runs through the catacombs beneath Paris to come out with her life and the reader's satisfaction. Long and harrowing at times, but centers on Claire and the professor with a satisfying payoff in the end. `"Believe Me" reminded me of M. J. Rose but was definitely not a copycat book or in the same vein. Delaney writes with subtlety and not without Rose's passion, but ends with a good and different book. "Believe Me" was believable and just long enough to whet the reader's appetite for more, as well as giving enough history to interest the reader in other writers like Flaubert and his peers. With poetry like that which is quoted in "Believe Me" the age of reason was quite a bodice-ripping time.