The Stranger by Harlan Coben

Published by Dutton on March 24, 2015

Adam Price is living the dream. He has a wife and two sons and he earns a decent income. He is convinced that he would do everything in his power to keep his family safe and happy. But the dream gives way to reality when a stranger tells Adam that his wife faked her pregnancy and miscarriage to keep him from leaving. The stranger provides evidence of that contention and then suggests, while admitting that he's only speculating, that Adam might want to do a DNA test to be sure that he's really the father of his sons.

The stranger's next encounters are with Heidi Dann, who learns something unpleasant about a family member, and Michaela Siegel, who learns the truth about an incident that had a serious impact upon her young life. Why the stranger drops bombshells on people and how he learns their secrets remain a mystery through much of the novel. What seems like a fairly straightforward crime in the novel's first half becomes more complex as the second half of the story begins to unfold.

Saying much more about the plot would be a crime in itself, so I won't. The novel's background details, ranging from female bodybuilding competition to Adam's attempt to prevent the city from seizing a client's home are just as interesting as the main story. I wasn't entirely convinced by the stranger's motivation for messing with people's lives, but the world is full of people who are motivated by odd beliefs so it was easy to set those doubts aside.

The ending comes as something of an anti-climax, in part because the reveal of the main bad guy is fairly obvious and in part because the actions of a supporting character at the end of the novel struck me as unlikely. Despite a mildly disappointing ending, I enjoyed reading The Stranger. The pace is brisk, the characters are likable, and my interest in the plot never abated.

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