The Accident Man

335 Pages·2008·1.26 MB·English

by  Cain Tom

“This is the best first thriller I have read since The Day of the
Jackal, and that was a long time ago. With one mighty
bound, Tom Cain has vaulted over Archer and Grisham
and stands close on Frederick Forsyth’s tail.”
—Wilbur Smith “The attention to detail, the skillful building and
relaxing of
tension, the imaginative violence, the consistency and
human frailties of his characters—all make this a tour de
force, especially for a first-time novelist. I found myself
favourably comparing Cain’s storytelling with the best of
Ian Fleming and Robert Ludlum as I dashed from one page
to the next, easily polishing off the 320-page novel in two
sessions. This is a franchise with legs, and it should come as
no surprise that the movie rights have already been snapped
up by Paramount.”
—Calgary Herald
“Audacious, authentic, full of tension and tradecraft. . . .
Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t, but either way it’s a great
thriller read. I loved it.”
—Lee Child
“This audacious first novel takes the events surrounding the
death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and melds them with an
utterly fantastic conspiracy in this tale of assassin-for-hire
Samuel Carver.”
—Ottawa Citizen
Also by Tom Cain
No Survivors
a cognizant original v5 release november 12 2010
THE
ACCIDENT
MAN

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First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division
of Pearson Canada Inc., 2008
Published in this edition, 2009
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)
Copyright © Tom Cain, 2007
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no
part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the
copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Designed by Nancy Resnick
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available upon request
to the publisher
American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available
ISBN: 978-0-14305598-3
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it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
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Author’s Note
The Accident Man was inspired by real events, the worldwide reaction to them,
and the ongoing speculation that surrounds them. Wherever relevant, I have
endeavored to respect the facts as they are known. Nevertheless, this is explicitly
and unambiguously a work of fiction. I am categorically not claiming to reveal
some supposedly genuine conspiracy that has somehow remained undisclosed or
suppressed up to this point. An investigative journalist or police detective tries to
uncover the answer to the factual question “What happened?” But writing as a
novelist, I have used my imagination to devise an answer to a very different,
hypothetical inquiry: “What if . . . ?”
PRELUDE