Sweet Liar

Sweet Liar is a romance by Jude Deveraux, published by Pocket Books in 1992 and part of the group of her novels that share the Montgomery family. It is set between New York and the south, and its plot is driven by a provision in a will.

Samantha Elliot has been managed by her father her whole life, and his will continues the arrangement: to inherit, she must move to New York City and investigate the disappearance of her grandmother sixty years before. She is shy, divorced and inexperienced at making decisions, and the search brings her into contact with a private investigator who does not think much of her story, and the two of them work backwards through a family that has been keeping its own secrets.

Deveraux builds the romance around the mystery, so the relationship advances with the investigation and the family history supplies both the obstacle and the reason the two characters keep meeting. It is one of the Montgomery novels of that period and one of the books in which the search for a missing relative supplies the structure.