REVIEW: THE WRONG MAN, BY KATE WHITE

 

 

 

It was a beautiful spring season, shortly after Kit Finn’s 35th birthday, so while on a working vacation in Islamorada, Florida, she decides to do something daring.

She starts seeing everything differently, with this new perspective. So when she literally bumps into a handsome man after breakfast in the hotel…and then sees him several more times in random places, she responds when he asks her to dinner.

Their dinner turns into a brief sexual encounter, so when she heads home afterwards, she anticipates nothing more. But he calls and arranges to meet her for dinner back in New York.

He said his name was Matt Healy and that he had just sold his tech company. He is pondering what to do next.

Back in New York and ready to resume her life as an interior decorator with her 71 year old business partner, Baby Meadow, she is full of ideas for a cottage she is doing over for a client named Avery Howe.

But she does show up at the hotel for the prearranged dinner date, excited and full of the possibilities. Imagine her surprise to be greeted at the door by a stranger. A stranger who says his name is Matt Healy.

From that point on, everything about The Wrong Man: A Novel of Suspense felt like a dizzying whirl through a topsy-turvy world, as Kit discovers more and more unsettling facts about the man she thought she had met, a man whom the real Matt Healy says had stolen his identity.

Could everything after that be a twisted lie, as more and more layers unfold to reveal deeper secrets and betrayals? The police are involved now, so when a man is struck down by a car in Florida, matching the description of Kit’s stranger, she goes there to identify him. Only to see that the man is actually the real Matt Healy.

Who was the man in Florida? Why is he now in New York, contacting Kit with his own version of events? Is his true identity Garrett Kelman, and can he be trusted?

A case of insider trading in a company called Ithaca darkens the murky waters…and somehow Kit’s involvement grows, with more murders and unexpected details that keep flooding in. To say more would be to reveal too much. Suffice it to say that before you turn the last page, you will have suspected every character at one point or another, and Kit will be on a race to find the truth and stay alive. 5 stars.