The Stranger

The  Stranger by Harlan Coben                Audio Book:  10 hours    Hardback Book: 386 pages           

If you liked the story, “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn, you will like this story.   I liked both books very much.    The story line of “The Stranger,”  is a person reveals various people’s dark secrets to their spouse or depending on the secret that a person is concealing, it could be to their constituents, etc.    It is a blackmail type of reveal because the stranger lets the person with the secret know they know first and the stranger tries to extort money from the person to keep their secret quiet.   If the person doesn’t pay the stranger, the stranger reveals the secret to whoever it affects in order to wreak retribution on the offending secret holder.   It gets deep when people begin to disappear.   Then strange texts arrive.   Are they real or not.    Why would these people (the ones with secrets) take off?    Fingers begin to be pointed but motives come into play that maybe things aren’t quite as they seem and maybe never were.   Small quaint towns where the population pretty much grew up together and everyone knows each other even for generations can still hold mysteries.    Not every face that is shown is real some mask a lot going on behind their eyes.    Acccusations, questionable behavior, money synonomouse for power all blend to create a good who done it and why did they do it?    Good story I enjoyed it.