How to Be a Liar

From The Traitors to crime fiction, we're fascinated by, and drawn to, deception. Join us for an absorbing conversation between one of the country's leading investigative psychologists, a crime novelist with thirty years experience as a barrister and KC and a retired probation officer who’s heard it all. Plus, try your hand at spotting a liar with some fun and fascinating videos.

Elizabeth Baxter is a retired Probation Officer who worked in the service for twenty-five years until its privatisation, working with her longest client for twenty years. She is now a holistic therapist. A Murderer’s Guide to Cleaning is her first book.

Guy Morpuss worked as a barrister for thirty years, on cases featuring drug-taking cyclists, dead Formula 1 champions and aspiring cemetery owners. His debut novel, Five Minds, was a Financial Times Book of the Year and a Kindle Number 1 Bestseller in Technothrillers and Post-Apocalyptic SF. Translation rights have been sold in eight territories. His second novel, Black Lake Manor, was a Financial Times SF Book of the Month and a Waterstones Best Crime Book of 2022. His third novel is a legal thriller, A Trial in Three Acts, published by Viper Books in March 2025; out in paperback in March 2026. Much like the novel’s protagonist, Charles Konig KC, Guy enjoys writing mildly amusing letters to The Times, to see how many they will print.

Zoë Walkington is a Professor of Psychology at The Open University. She has specialised in the psychology of police investigations and spent over 20 years training detectives on the psychological aspects of police-suspect interviews. Zoë is also a poet published by Smith Doorstop, and her second pamphlet entitled Missing Person is a solvable poetry sequence, which blurs the boundary between poetry and detective fiction.

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