Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time (UK 2011)

From the Publisher:
One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Against his better judgement, he is soon sucked into the tortuous complexity of the dead woman's life. But the closer Timariot gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late, he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to live...

Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time. Corgi Books, ISBN: 9780552164177 (March, 2011), 478 p., £7.99.

Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time (USA 2006)

From the Publisher:
On a golden evening in the countryside, a hiker meets an elegant woman who seems strangely out of place. In a fleeting moment, they share a sense of intimacy and part as strangers, neither knowing that violence is about to overtake them both... Thus begins Robert Goddard's spellbinding novel, a tale that opens with a chance encounter on the Welsh Borders-and ends three years later in a scene of terror in a shuttered London apartment.

Just hours after Robin Timariot met Louise Paxton, she was dead. Robin's testimony about his brief, unforgettable meeting with Louise alternately soothes, intrigues, and infuriates her family and friends -- until a miscarriage of justice explodes in a national scandal. Now circumstances dictate that Robin begin his own hunt for the truth hidden in a baffling case. And when he does, he will discover that deceit is everywhere around him, a killer is free, and one last, terrible crime has yet to be committed...

Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time. Delta, ISBN: 0385339224 (January, 2006), 397 p., $12.00

Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time (UK 1995)

From the Publisher:
It is a golden evening of high summer. Walking a ridge on the Welsh Borders, Robin Timariot meets by chance an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later Timariot learns from the newspapers that, just hours after their meeting, the woman was raped and murdered.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Fascinated by the dead woman's memory, he is sucked into the complex motives and tortured relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgement for the secret of what really happened the day she died.

The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live.

Robert Goddard: Borrowed Time. Corgi Books, ISBN: 0552142239 (December, 1995), 446 p., £5.99.