The Stranger by Harlan Coben

The Stranger is Harlan Coben’s latest stand-alone mystery, thriller.  Adam and Corinne Price are a reasonably happy couple in small town Cedarfield, New Jersey.  Adam is a property rights lawyer and Corinne is a school teacher and ‘soccer mom’.  Their two sons are avid lacrosse players who both play on travel teams.  One day while at a lacrosse club organizational meeting, a stranger approaches Adam and tells him his wife has been lying to him.  This sets off a chain of events that change the Price family forever.

The stranger tells Adam that Corinne had not had a miscarriage two years earlier as he thought but that she had faked a pregnancy.  The stranger directs Adam to a website offering fake pregnancy paraphernalia for sale.  Adam checks their credit card receipts and finds that Corinne had indeed purchased sonograms, fake pregnancy tests, and a baby bump, all as novelty items.  When Adam confronts Corinne with his suspicions, she says she needs time to explain and disappears leaving only a text saying she will return in a few days.

Adam takes Corinne at her word and tells their sons that Mom is away on a retreat.  But their oldest son, Thomas tracks her cell phone and finds out it was last pinged in Pittsburg.  Adam knew of no reason for Corinne to visit Pittsburg.  Then the local police chief and officers of the boys’ lacrosse team pay Adam a visit looking for Corinne.  They suspect her of embezzling money from the team’s coffers in her role as treasurer.

Meanwhile, without Adam’s knowledge, the stranger strikes again… this time in Cleveland.  He tells a wealthy suburban housewife that her daughter currently attending NYU is involved in an escort service.  The woman is murdered in her home the following day after speaking with her daughter.  The stranger continues his spree of outing secrets of loved ones but sometimes he blackmails the secret holder instead… no apparent pattern.

Adam grows impatient awaiting Corinne’s return and starts to investigate.  He’s reluctant to go to the police because he fears he would become the prime suspect.  With the help of a former client adept in cyber sleuthing, the stranger and several co-conspirators are identified.  Adam then connects the stranger and his posse to the dead woman in Cleveland.  But it makes no sense… why kill the affected party after the sensitive information is revealed?  Could Corinne be dead too?  Is his life in jeopardy as well?  Is his wife involved with something much more notorious and complex than a fake pregnancy?

In The Stranger, Coben does a great job of slowing revealing the story and thus stimulating your imagination and building suspense.  But for me as in most Harlan Coben novels, he brushes up against the plausibility line a little too closely.  His characters don’t quite react the way you’d expect or wish they had.  It’s like he throws in one too many twists.  The ending lacks closure and leaves you somewhat disappointed.  It seems this has become Coben’s trademark… keep them guessing, never conclude as expected.  But then, that’s what bestselling authors do.