Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire - Downs Crime Mysteries, #18

It was just a form, a piece of paper with a few boxes to tick and what he thought were meaningless words. No-one reads these things. He had no idea why people even bothered. Filling it in as some sort of joke, he would soon find there were severe consequences. A whole series of dominoes collapsed all around him and changed his life completely. That was not a bad thing for this self-centred braggart who continually sought attention and thought he knew it all.
That one form that he filled in at the end of his police training, with its innocuous lie led to a whirlwind of events where he met a wide range of people who had their own secrets and their own lies that they tried to hide. Martin Phillips was young and naive, but was forced to grow up quickly in order to survive.