Three letters in the title of JP Delaney’s second psychological thriller Believe Me are highlighted on the cover.

Those three letters – LIE – give a pretty good hint that all will not be as it seems.

And so it transpires in this entertaining, twisty story by Delaney, the pen name of Oxfordshire writer Tony Strong.

Claire Wright is a British actress who is struggling to pay her rent and get by in New York.

Without a green card to work legally, she takes the only part she’s offered, as a decoy for a firm of lawyers, hired to entrap straying husbands.

She approaches them in bars and catches them on tape while they are making their seductive propositions.

She’s good at it, helping the firm gain evidence.

So good that when one of her targets is investigated for murdering his wife – and potentially others too – the police persuade her to attempt to seduce him and lure him in to a confession of his crimes.

She takes on the role... one that could have deadly consequences.

Of course – remember that title? – that’s not the only deception going on.

What follows has more twists and turns than the notorious Nürburgring race track.

Is the suspect really a killer – or the only decent husband Claire has ever met.

And what’s the truth about her own past?

Delaney’s first book The Girl Before, a best-seller, which is being made into a film directed by Ron Howard, had a calm, but chilling, simplicity to it.

That’s not the case with the follow-up.

Although, like its predecessor, Believe Me is well-written and will keep readers turning the pages, it has a much more convoluted storyline and over the top ending.

Entertaining but not entirely believable.

Believe Me by JP Delaney, published by Quercus, £12.99 hardback, ebook £6.49