The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams

Published by Bantam on August 30, 2011

In the real world, when they aren’t stating the obvious, criminal profilers are wrong about as often as they’re right.  In thriller world, profilers have a miraculous ability to understand the criminal mind.  That is certainly true of Keye Street, the former FBI profiler turned private investigator who stars in The Stranger You Seek.  Fortunately, profiling is a relatively small part of the story.

The Stranger You Seek is a novel of old and new.  The old:  Keye reacted to the ugliness she saw while investigating crime by turning to alcohol, eventually losing her job (hence her gig as a private investigator).  Keye employs an anti-establishment, counterculture computer hacker who can break into highly secure computers (thriller world is full of them and they all seem to work for private investigators).  Keye’s best friend is a police lieutenant who needs her help to find a serial killer.  Soon after Keye joins the hunt, the killer starts writing letters to her police lieutenant friend, taunting him with clues to the next victim.  And, of course, the hunters eventually become the hunted.

The new:  The serial killer writes a “fantasy” blog on a website for knife fetishists.  Keye does realistic bread-and-butter work (serving subpoenas, performing background checks, finding people who jumped bail) when she’s not chasing the killer.  Keye’s   Chinese mother worked as a stripper.  Keye puts yellow mustard on her jalapeño-infused hash browns.

Yes, I’m grasping at straws:  the novel is more old than new.  I liked it anyway.  Amanda Kyle Williams gives her primary characters interesting personalities and crafts a well-written story that, if not entirely original, is more entertaining than most. 

Stories about serial killers often challenge the reader to find the pattern that links the killings.  The Stranger You Seek does that effectively.  On the other hand, the revelation of the killer’s identity is forced.  Although it seems to have been designed to shock the reader, I doubt that many will have that reaction.  Williams tacks on a climax that surprised me but didn’t persuade me; it was so incongruous that it elicited a “you’ve got to be kidding” response.  Further impairing the story’s credibility is Keye’s insistence that there isn’t enough evidence to arrest the killer even after the killer confesses to her.  There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to corroborate the confession and criminals are convicted every day on the basis of their unrecorded admissions.  Keye would surely know that.  The killer is plainly left free only to set up the novel’s climax.

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed reading The Stranger You Seek.  The novel benefits from solid writing, engaging characters, and appealing humor.  The grins induced by the story’s lighter moments as Keye finds creative ways to serve subpoenas and apprehend bail jumpers made me think that the novel would have worked better as the story of Keye’s luckless life without forcing a serial killer into the mix.

On the strength of Williams’ writing skill, I’m encouraged to read the next Keye Street novel.  I hope she continues to develop her offbeat centralcharacter without feeling the need to craft a contrived plot for the sake of adhering to the norms of thriller world. 

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