The British actor's very funny first novel traces the antics of a reckless, irreverent ex-Cambridge student involved in a bizarre espionage caper.

Adrian Healey, a British schoolboy and "the liar" of the title, is an amusing, if appalling, character, and readers will enjoy following him as he develops from a lovesick teenager with a "pash" on fellow student Hugo Cartwright to a Cambridge undergraduate involved in international espionage.

There are interludes along the way involving, among other things, sex, suicide, Piccadilly rent-boys, and a "lost" pornographic novel by Charles Dickens.

A clever and entertaining novel that will appeal to Anglophiles with a twisted sense of humor.