Lying

Aunt Munca’s murky past

Kiss Myself Goodbye. It sounds a bit like a William Boyd novel. It looks likea William Boyd novel, too: the cover shows an old hand-coloured photograph of a fur-stoled woman, determinedly leading a man in morning dress towards the camera. And, indeed, the raw material would likely make a very good William Boyd novel — only Boyd would have to jettison at least half of the breakneck hairpin bends in the mad, mazy plot for the sake of believability. This could be the ultimate case of a tale too strange to be fiction. Ferdinand Mount has crafted the perfect, custom-made receptacle for his extraordinary story. The (anti)-hero is the millionairess