Wrong Place Wrong Time: How do you stop a murder when it’s already happened? THE MILLION-COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Gillian McAllister

May 2022 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

THE SUNDAY TIMES THRILLER OF THE YEAR
'Perfection, every word, every moment. One of the best books I've ever read' LISA JEWELL
'Wow. Amazing! Loved every page . . . If you are looking for a summer read, I've found it!' HOLLY WILLOUGHBY
'Page-turning time-loop thriller . . . An intelligent puzzle full of heart and good sense' GUARDIAN
'A mind-bending page-turning thriller. Non-stop thrills right from the start. A rare gem' STEVE WRIGHT, RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB
'A spellbinding "whydunnit". A novel with a difference' SUNDAY TIMES
'Skilful, satisfying. Couldn't put it down. Don't miss it!' OBSERVER, 'THRILLER OF THE MONTH'

CAN YOU STOP A MURDER AFTER IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED? . . . DISCOVER THE MOST TALKED ABOUT THRILLER OF THE YEAR
_________

It's late. You're waiting up for your son.

Then you spot him: he's with someone. And - you can't believe what you see - your funny, happy teenage boy stabs this stranger.

You don't know who. You don't know why. You only know your son is charged with murder. His future is lost.

That night you fall asleep in despair. But when you wake . . . it is yesterday. The day before the murder.

Somewhere in the past lie the answers - a reason for this crime.

And your only chance to stop it . . .
_________

'Masterfully plotted and ingenious. One of the best books I've read this year' SUNDAY EXPRESS
'A genre-defining masterpiece. An instant classic' HOLLY SEDDON
'I was gripped' JANE CORRY
'Brilliantly original, so tense and so moving' LUCY CLARKE
'So riveting you'll pull a sickie and ignore all family and friends until the breath-taking final page' CELIA WALDEN
'Mindblowingly good. I'm in awe' JANE FALLON
'Fiendishly clever and flawlessly executed' ROSIE WALSH

PRAISE FOR GILLIAN MCALLISTER:

'Gillian McAllister just gets better and better' CLAIRE MACKINTOSH

'Like watching a gripping, claustrophobic box set' CLAIRE DOUGLAS

'The queen of the moral dilemma' HOLLY SEDDON

'If Jodi Picoult wrote thrillers, they would look like this' ROSMUND LUPTON

'Any writer can keep you turning the pages - few can make you care this much' ERIN KELLY

Ratings and reviews

The concept was 👌, the twists and turns had me hooked, and I flew through the pages at great speed. The mother's love truly resonates and, whilst I worked it all out pretty quickly (I'm not called Columbo for nothin'), this was an excellent read.

Loved this book, couldn't put it down at all. Twisty with a clever plot and never once bored me!;

Wow, just wow. Jen is a middle-aged lawyer, married to Kelly (a self-employed painter and decorator) with an eighteen year old son Todd. On the Saturday just before Hallowe'en, on the night the clocks go back to mark the end of British Summer Time, Jen is waiting for Todd to return home from a party when she sees him accosted by an older man in the street. feeling deeply uneasy Jen and Kelly run into the street only to see Todd stab the man several times. When Jen awakes the next morning, ready to go to the Police station to get Todd a lawyer etc, she is astonished to find that Todd is at home. Neither Todd nor Kelly has any memory of the previous evening's events and it becomes obvious pretty quickly that Jen has woken up on the Saturday morning (again), before the stabbing, can she do anything to prevent her son possibly spending twenty five years in prison for murder? With her lawyer's eye for detail Jen notices things as she relives the day that she never noticed before but each new clue is just a fragment - now she notices that her son has become thinner, less joyful than he was six months ago, is she a bad mother for not paying attention? Did something she failed to do lead to the stabbing? Each day when Jen awakes she wakes a day earlier, then a week, going further back in time, discovering everything she thought she knew about her life and her marriage was a lie, but still no closer to why Todd killed the man. I honestly spent several hours annoying my husband enormously yesterday by exclaiming at regular intervals over the latest twist in this book. What made it so enthralling was that I genuinely did not see half the twists coming, and yet they made total sense when they unfolded. I really wanted the Eastenders' theme tune to dum dum dum at the end of half the chapters as yet another truth was uncovered. There are so many things I won't discuss because to do so might spoil the novel for the reader. Suffice it to say that I was not only 100% invested in the novel while I was reading it, but when it finished I was also fully onboard with the ending (unlike another book which was too clever for its own good which I read recently), as I sit here the whole thing ties together beautifully with no concerns about plot holes. This reminds me of that film The Usual Suspects (in a good way) as the reader is led one way, then another, in the search for the truth. I have never read a book by Gillian McAllister before but if this is the calibre of plotting I will be looking up some of her previous books lickety-spit. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

About the author

Gillian McAllister is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of eight stand-alone novels. Her books have been selected for the Radio 2 Book Club, Reese's Book Club and the Richard & Judy Book Club. Her previous novel, Wrong Place Wrong Time, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and was shortlisted for The British Book Awards 2023 Crime & Thriller Book of the Year and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Gillian's books are published in thirty-eight languages.