The Stranger

Devious Whispers

A man is just sitting by himself in a bar, minding his own business, when a stranger sidles up to him and just like that, without preamble, tells him a damning secret about his wife. A guy would have to have nerves of steel to let something like that not affect him at all.

In Harlan Coben’s disturbing thriller, Adam Price, happily married father of two, cannot help but check on the stranger’s dubious claim and does not know quite how to handle it, when it turns out to be true. His peace of mind is wrecked, his family’s happiness threatened. He confronts his wife Corinne, she promises to confide all, and then vanishes.

A distraught Adam has to deal with his own misery and the fears of his two young sons who are traumatized by their mother’s disappearance. He also has to answer to concerned neighbours and bat away questions by suspicious cops.

If he has to avoid being accused of somehow abetting Corinne’s mysterious absence, he has to find her first. When he sets out to do that, corpses start piling up.

Coben, master of the thriller genre, and creator of the top-selling Myron Bolitar and Mickey Bolitar (for young readers) series, knows how to set up a nail-biting situation and gradually draw the reader into a larger conspiracy.

The stranger does the same thing to other people—messing with their minds by revealing secrets about their dear ones—but the dangerous game of deception, cover-up and murder this unleashes, goes out of control.

There is also the now popular device of the dark side of technology that can destroy lives if misused by the wrong people. There is Coben’s recognizable style of creating mayhem in placid suburban settings and the intricate plotting that moves logically and sure-footedly to an unpredictable climax.

For fans of the thriller, who liked his other standalone novels like Six Years and Missing You, the latest bestseller is a satisfying read.

The Stranger

By Harlan Coben

Published by Dutton

Pages: 400