The Liar
Stephen Fry
 The book opens with the narrative of the espionage period. Adrian and his mentor, Professor Donald Trefusis, are at Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg, where Adrian witnesses the (staged) murder of their contact. Adrian then enters the espionage game set up by his mentor, Trefusis, and his uncle, David. In the narrative of the school years, Adrian is at a public boys school (Harrow), portrayed as an intelligent and irreverent young man. Adrian has carefully groomed himself to convey the image of a witty, highly extroverted gay boy; however, despite his image, and, despite regarding sex as his "public pride", he finds himself unable to express his love for the beautiful Hugo Cartwright. Another student, Paul Trotter (known as "Pigs Trotter"[Sic.]), hangs himself, as he loves Adrian. Adrian is shown later in the novel to be touchy on the subject of suicide as a result. Prior to Trotter's funeral, Adrian seduces Hugo while pretending to be asleep. Adrian is later expelled from Harrow for writing an article discussing the tradition of hidden behaviours at mixed sex public schools that could be considered homosexual; consequently, he does his "A" levels in a Gloucestershire state school. In the narrative, Adrian claims to have escaped from home due to unhappiness, subsequently becoming a "rent boy", but it is later revealed, in an overheard conversation, that this never occurred. Adrian attains the role of school master in the narrative of the school years and has his first sexual encounter with a woman, of which he speaks positively. The school years finish with Adrian's cricket team defeating the team of Hugo Cartwright, to whom Adrian is no longer attracted. Just as Adrian and his victorious team is about to leave the school at which Hugo is a master he reveals to Hugo that he was, in fact, awake during the incident before Trotter's funeral. In the narrative of the university years, Adrian is at the fictional St. Matthew's College, Cambridge and is given a challenge to produce something original by his tutor Professor Donald Trefusis. As a result, with the aid of his his girlfriend — and later wife and acclaimed producer —, Jenny de Woolf, and his housemate Garry he writes and claims to have discovered a lost manuscript of Charles Dickens which dealt with child sex trade. The discovery brings Jenny and the college fame, but it also results in a dialogue between Adrian and Hugo, who has become an alcoholic. Hugo believes that Adrian in fact hates him, and outlines Adrian's duplicity as proof. Adrian, however, corrects him and the two leave things on a friendly note. After graduation, Adrian is at a meeting where farcically he and other attendees have a discussion while sabotaging the footage of the onlooking BBC film crew. At the meeting they discuss the arrest of Trefusis, who was arrested for cottaging. It is later revealed in the book that it was actually a document exchange preceded by two kisses on the checks as is custom in several continental countries, such as Hungary. Adrian joins Trefusis in his forced sabbatical which nominally is spent studying the fricative shift in English, but in actuality is spent in a game of espionage where they are to acquire the parts for Mendax (Latin adjective meaning "lying, deceptive"), a lie inhibiting device from his Hungarian friend Szabó and his two nephews. Adrian is gradually introduced to spy game as during his university he had accompanied Trefusis in several trips, such as the one in Salzburg, where Trefusis gets one of three parts of Mendax. A showdown results with Adrian's uncle David (Sir David Pearce of MI5) and Trefusis, which resolves as David's aid was a double agent working for Trefusis and it is revealed that the murders witnessed by Adrian were staged so Adrian would report them to his uncle, who ordered the murders to scare Trefusis into giving Mendax to MI5, and that Mendax was fictional. Subsequently Adrian overhears a conversation between Trefusis and David where it is revealed that several parts of the story were not true and that the espionage adventure was just a game to counter boredom. Previously, a letter Jenny had written to Adrian, stated that while young girls grew up, young boys did not, making their erudite education irrelevant and just a game. The book ends with Adrian, now a Cambridge fellow, recruiting a new spy for a new game. In the espionage period, David Pearce and Dickon Lister refer to other characters by code names: * Adrian is "Telemachus", the name of the son of Odysseus in the Odyssea. * Professor Donald Trefusis is "Odysseus". * Istvan Moltaj is "Patrochlus" (Sic. In Greek Πάτροκλος, not Πάτροχλος) * Szabó is "Helen", the catalyst of the Trojan war. * His nephews are "Castor" and "Pollux" * Salzburg is the "walls of Illium"