'Ingenious plot twists and insights into political campaigning, the Me Too movement and the darker side of the internet...this [is a] topical and thought-provoking thriller' The Times
Natasha Winthrop is a rising star in American politics, strongly tipped as a future candidate for president. One night she is violently assaulted in her home by an intruder. She defends herself and minutes later, the intruder lies dead. Winthrop is hailed as a #MeToo heroine: the woman who fought back.
But inconsistencies emerge in Winthrop's story, suggesting that the attack might not have been as random as it first seemed.
When former White House troubleshooter Maggie Costello is drafted in to investigate, she finds intriguing gaps, especially over Winthrop's early life. She likes this woman, who she believes could - and should - be president. But she can't shake off the question: who exactly is Natasha Winthrop?
A cat-and-mouse conspiracy thriller of rare intelligence, To Kill a Man explores an unsettling world in which justice is in the eye of the beholder and revenge seems to be the only answer.
Praise for To Kill a Man:
'Completely gripping and original. Sam Bourne puts female anger, vengeance and power at the centre of this, his latest and to my mind most exciting novel, to thrillingly cathartic effect' Hadley Freeman
'A compulsive, zeitgeisty tale of gender politics and social-media manipulation. The perfect post-#MeToo thriller - I gobbled it up' Louise Candlish
Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of award-winning journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland, who writes a weekly column for the Guardian and is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View. He served for four years as the Guardian's Washington correspondent, covered the 2016 US election campaign, and is covering the 2020 campaign. He is a widely respected commentator on American affairs.
His previous seven internationally bestselling novels have sold over two million copies and been published in over thirty languages.
A Day of the Jackal for these dizzying times
Ian Rankin
In To Kill the Truth, Maggie Costello rivetingly tackles a cabal of Holocaust and slavery deniers, whose aim is nothing less than to destroy memory
Sunday Times
Urgently topical
The Times
A propulsive plot and an appealing heroine . . . The premise is both intriguing and, in the current climate of post-truth, fake news and sour populism, grimly topical
Guardian
Read this book
Jeffrey Archer
Chilling . . . You think today's news is nightmarish enough? Sam Bourne's provocative thriller imagines things getting much, much worse
Mail on Sunday
A dazzling thriller
Charles Cumming, author of The Man Between
Bourne's writing is chillingly plausible... Read it while it's still fiction
James Swallow, author of Nomad and Exile
House of Cards mixed with Homeland
Eli Attie, Writer/Producer, The West Wing
A barnstorming read
Raymond Khoury, author of The End Game
Brilliantly convincing
David Hare
A gripping thriller and a prescient warning
Sunday Times
Pacy, engaging and morally serious
Guardian
Grips from first to last page
Sunday Times Crime Club
Topical and thought-provoking
The Times