Title: The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 384 pages
Book Rating: B+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
Even good people are drawn to do evil things…
Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice—and killed him in cold blood.
Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends’ abductor force Rain to revisit memories she’s worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can’t Rain just let it go?
Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.
Review:
The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger is a mesmerizing, suspenseful mystery.
Rain Winter has seemingly moved on from the seminal event of her childhood: surviving a kidnapping attempt that left her best friend Tess dead. But an apparent vigilante murder brings her survivor’s guilt bubbling to the surface and Rain is compelled to revisit the traumatic event. Although she is now a stay at home mom to baby Lily, Rain was at one time an extremely successful radio news producer. Calling upon her former sources for insider information, she and her best friend and on air personality, Gillian Murray, begin tossing around an idea for a podcast in which they explore Rain’s past. Rain’s husband, Greg, is worried about what how this investigation will affect his wife but he is soon on board with her decision. What surprises await Rain as her quest for answers takes her back to the still unsolved murder of Eugene Kreskey, the man who tried to abduct her and murdered her best friend?
Rain is torn between staying home with Lily and her desire to return to work. But she cannot resist the urge to dig into her own past and take a hard look at all of the memories she has forced herself to neatly box up and put to the side. Despite therapy, Rain has still not come to terms with the events of that horrible day but she has learned to live with what happened to her, Tess and their friend, Hank. She is unable to resist her compulsion to investigate what happened to Kreskey but is Rain prepared for the answers she will find?
Interspersed with Rain’s investigation are chapters narrated in first person from the murderer’s point of view. These passages offer a fascinating peek into the mind of a killer whose need for justice is nearly overwhelming. The chapters are insightful and provide intriguing information about the chilling effects that trauma can wreak on a person’s psyche. The murderer is a surprisingly sympathetic character who survived a horrific ordeal only to be unalterably transformed by violence.
The Stranger Inside is a clever mystery with a unique premise and an engaging cast of characters. Rain is a likable but sometimes very frustrating protagonist. The mysterious narrator’s chapters are compelling and utterly absorbing. The storyline is riveting with shocking twists and turns. Lisa Unger expertly ratchets the tension to a fever pitch as the novel hurtles a jaw-dropping, stunning conclusion. I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend this multi-layered mystery to fans of the genre.
