Shooting at Strangers

One spring morning in Manchester city centre a terrorist pulls out a gun and starts shooting indiscriminately. Among the panicking crowd, one woman recognises the gunman. Surviving the attack, weighed down by trauma and survivor guilt, Amber Jennings sets out to discover how Jameel - the shy, rather awkward young man she knew in her teens - could have become a mass murderer.
The complicated relationships of Amber's earlier life interweave with and inform the contemporary narrative. Central to the story is Amber's relationship with the MI5 officer whose suspicions are aroused by her investigative activities. When the press become interested in her story, Amber's troubles increase still further. Operating beneath the radar of both MI5 and the media, Amber's eyes are opened to the troubling role she herself played in her friend's tragic downward spiral.
Shooting at Strangers looks beyond the simplistic, black and white, good and evil representations of terrorism, to explore the complexities and contradictions of the characters involved.