The Guardian of Lies cover art

The Guardian of Lies

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Guardian of Lies

By: Kate Furnivall
Narrated by: Imogen Church
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 *** The top ten bestselling author ***
Discover a brilliant story of love, danger, courage and betrayal, from the internationally bestselling author of The Survivors.
1953, the South of France. The fragile peace between the West and Soviet Russia hangs on a knife edge. And one family has been torn apart by secrets and conflicting allegiances.

Eloïse Caussade is a courageous young Frenchwoman, raised on a bull farm near Arles in the Camargue. She idolises her older brother, André, and when he leaves to become an Intelligence Officer working for the CIA in Paris to help protect France, she soon follows him. Having exchanged the strict confines of her father's farm for a life of freedom in Paris, her world comes alive.

But everything changes when André is injured - a direct result of Eloise's actions. Unable to work, André returns to his father’s farm, but Eloïse’s sense of guilt and responsibility for his injuries sets her on the trail of the person who attempted to kill him.

Eloïse finds her hometown in a state of unrest and conflict. Those who are angry at the construction of the American airbase nearby, with its lethal nuclear armaments, confront those who support it, and anger flares into violence, stirred up by Soviet agents. Throughout all this unrest, Eloïse is still relentlessly hunting down the man who betrayed her brother and his country, and she is learning to look at those she loves and at herself with different eyes. She no longer knows who she can trust. Who is working for Soviet Intelligence and who is not? And what side do her own family lie on?

Further praise for Kate Furnivall's novels:

'Gripping. Tense. Mysterious. Kate Furnivall has a talent for creating places and characters who stay with you long after you’ve read the final word' Jane Corry
'Exquisitely heart-wrenching & utterly engrossing' Penny Parkes
'A thrilling, compelling read. Wonderful!' Lesley Pearse
‘Wonderful . . . hugely ambitious and atmospheric’ Kate Mosse
‘A thrilling plot … Fast-paced with a sinister edge’ Times
‘Truly captivating’ Elle
‘Perfect escapist reading’ Marie Claire©2019 Kate Furnivall (P)2019 Simon & Schuster UK Historical Historical Fiction Romance

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Betrayal cover art
The Survivors cover art
Sleeper cover art
The Cypress Maze cover art
The Secret Photograph cover art
The Garden of Lost Secrets cover art
The Sacrifice (A Thriller) cover art
Past Encounters cover art
The Tuscan Secret cover art
The Girl Who Escaped cover art
The Partisan Heart cover art
The Paris Assignment cover art
Killing State cover art
Blood Will Be Born cover art
Beneath a Burning Sky cover art
Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Once I got into this and listened past the slightly aggressive voice of Imogen Church I found it a real thriller . Elouise was a really brilliant hero , if a little mad . It had me gripped to the end .

A gripping story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Kate Furniall is a great story teller and while I enjoyed this overall I didn't feel it met her usual standard. The story started well but dragged and lost impetus in the middle. The two main characters were well established but many others were not defined clearly enough and I found myself forgetting who they were. There were many great moments of suspense but these were not developed and lost impact.

The narrator's voice was clear but she tended to over dramatise which became irritating by mid book. And I wanted to scream at the never ending repetition of "Paree" The book is written in Englsh so why does Paris have to be pronounced "Paree" literally every few minutes - and I do mean every few minutes. The main character is for ever being told to go back to "Paree" or reminding us that in "Paree" she did or heard xyz!! At one point I did actually yell at my tablet to tell her to go to Marseilles or Tours or Wigan, any where but Paree! Do books not have editors any more? Good editing would have corrected this annoying repetition which really mars the book.

I also found some of the animal content distressing and over done. I am sure the author felt this important to the story but for me it was too much. The feelings of danger to the family could have been aroused in other ways or at least handled more sensitively. Animal lovers beware, parts of this story are nasty.

Despite all this I did finish the book but did not enjoy it as much as the author's earler works.

Mixed feelings

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Note to self- always listen to the excerpt before buying a book! I found the narration of this book so dreadful that I had to give up listening. The point of narration is to convey the words to the reader, not to go through the book as if you are auditioning for RADA. The best narrators are ones you hardly notice, but Imogen Church's exaggerated speech really grated with me. I might have persevered (it's unusual for me not to finish an audio book) but the story just seemed quite bonkers, full of stereotypical characters and an implausible story line. No more Kate Furnival for me I'm afraid and definitely nothing narrated by Imogen Church! However the only other reviewer gave it straight 5's so what do I know!

Really poor story with dreadful narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.