Jeff Abbott (Time Warner Original £6.99)

WHAT would you do if you discovered everything in your life was a lie? writes David Thomson.

Evan Casher is a 24-year-old documentary filmmaker whose career is booming. His relationship with new girlfriend Carrie Lindstrom is going well. In fact Evan is in love.

Then everything changes. Evan receives an urgent phone call from his mother begging him to return from Houston to their home in Austin, Texas.

He arrives to find his mother brutally murdered, cases packed, poised for flight. He then narrowly escapes an attempt on his own life thanks to the intervention of the mysterious Gabriel, a mercenary with an agenda of his own.

Evan is faced with a shocking discovery: his entire life is based on a carefully constructed lie.

His only hope is to uncover the truth about his family’s past and to confront a powerful organisation of killers who will stop at nothing to keep old secrets buried.

With no-one to trust, not his father, not Carrie, not the authorities and with his mother’s killers fast on his heels it’s a perilous search that takes him to New Orleans, to London, to Miami.

The story of an ordinary guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances, this is an amazing roller-coaster of a novel, which grabs your emotions from the first page.

Be prepared to stay up late to finish this one.

VERDICT: Unputdownable.

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