Review: KILL A STRANGER, Simon Kernick

• 
  this edition published by Headline Publishing 2020
• ISBN 978-1-4722-7096-2
  
• 376 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

They took your fiancée.
They framed you for murder.

You’re given one chance to save her. To clear your name.
You must kill someone for them.

They give you the time and place.
The weapon. The target.

You have less than 24 hours.
You only know that no-one can be trusted…and nothing is what it seems.

My Take

Matt Walters comes home late one night to find his pregnant fiance gone, and a strange woman in his bed .. dead in a pool of blood, with a phone in her hand. The phone rings and Matt's nightmare begins. Webcam footage shows Kate with a noose around her neck, and a voice on the phone tells Matt he must follow instructions or Kate will die.

There are are four main narrative voices in this story: Matt, Kate, a British policeman, and Kate's father.  The trouble is that we, the readers, don't know which has the true story, and which is the unreliable narrator. One of them, at least, is a killer.

To be honest, I was 10 pages from the end before I had the plot worked out.

I know I have read a Simon Kernick novel sometime in the past, but apparently not in the history of this blog (13 years) so I am claiming him as a "new to me" author. A much neglected one.

My rating: 4.5