Unlike narrators who lie to the reader, Alex lies to himself because his own mind is a void. This creates a unique psychological tension; the reader is forced to investigate alongside a character who might very well be the villain of his own story. The "liar" of the title refers not just to a specific character’s intent, but to the deceptive nature of the human brain under trauma. Setting as Atmosphere: Illumbe

The novel begins with a classic noir trope: Alex, the protagonist, wakes up in an abandoned factory next to a corpse. He has no memory of how he got there or who the dead man is. This immediate immersion into "amnesia-driven suspense" allows Santiago to utilize Alex as an inherently unreliable narrator.

The Architecture of Deception: A Study of El mentiroso by Mikel Santiago