The shot - Philip Kerr

'Riveting... as shocking as it is brilliant' Daily Mail
'A cleverly contrived reworking of the Kennedy assassination myth' The Times
'A really terrific read' Literary Review

Darkly imaginative alternative history thriller from the global bestseller and author of the Bernie Gunther thrillers.

America, 1960. In Washington, DC, John F Kennedy has just been elected President. In Havana, Fidel Castro has been in office for a year, and with Cold War tensions rapidly heating up and the Soviets leading the space race, the thought of a Communist leader so close to home is already raising American blood pressure.

Anti-communist fever is rampant in the USA, with a paranoid establishment seeing reds under every bed. Nevertheless, the decision to snuff out the threat of Castro by hiring Tom Jefferson, America's best assassin, to kill him comes from an unusual quarter: the Mafia.

But Jefferson's very skillset that makes him the perfect man for this job also ensures he has no qualms in double crossing his criminal paymasters. Jefferson has no issue with Castro: his preferred target is someone much closer to home...

'Mind boggling ... keeps you guessing until the end' Sunday Express

Philip Kerr has written over thirty books of which the best-known are the internationally renowned and bestselling Bernie Gunther series. The sixth book in the series, If the Dead Rise Not, won the CWA Historical Dagger. His other works include several standalone thrillers, non-fiction and an acclaimed series for younger readers, The Children of the Lamp. Philip died in March 2018, days before the publication of his 13th Bernie Gunther thriller, Greeks Bearing Gifts. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature shortly before his death.