Who would have thought at this late date, some 25 years after Harlan Coben published PLAY DEAD, that anyone would be heralding THE STRANGER as his best book thus far? That “anyone” would be me, and if I am the only hand clapping on this, so be it. However, it hit me and has stayed with me more strongly than any of the other novels in his considerable canon.

Part of my attraction toward THE STRANGER is due to the characterization. Adam Price is your upper middle-class, lower upper-class everyman, an attorney who specializes in a narrow field of real property law when, but for a chance encounter, he would have been happily defending the all-but-indefensible as a public defender. The other half of that chance encounter is Adam’s wife, Corinne, who has tugged him gently along a career path in which they have been successful enough to acquire a nice home in a terrific but not ostentatious neighborhood with good schools. They are both comfortable in their respective roles of their domestic partnership, the he-does-this-and-she-does-that while balancing the needs and wants of their teenage sons. It is a pretty solid relationship all in all. You know these people, and you know the types who you meet here through Adam’s viewpoint, including the head of the soccer committee (with the positively brilliant nickname), Corinne’s best friend, and, well, literally everyone.

"Longtime fans of Coben and those enjoying his work for the first time will find much to love in this stand-alone title, which is honed with both his trademark style and some unique twists and turns that take the reader to unexpected and frightening places."

Coben has always been known for his dead-on characterizations, but he surpasses himself in THE STRANGER. And, as goes the characterization, so goes the plotting. Adam’s comfortable and reasonably happy life quickly goes bottoms up, when Adam is approached at a meeting by a stranger who suggests that he double-check a specific item on their credit card statement. The purchase is non-descript at first blush but nonetheless mysterious. Adam traces it back to the sales company and discovers that Corinne told him a significant lie two years previously, which is remote in time but continues to inform their relationship, however subtly, in the present. When Adam confronts Corinne with that knowledge, she does not deny it, but instead asks to talk with him about it the next day. It doesn’t happen. Corinne disappears, asking for a few days apart so they each can sort things out.

The stranger who so briefly entered Adam’s life is entering the lives of others as well. A woman in suburban Cleveland is given information about her daughter, a freshman attending college in New York, that will change the family forever. The father of a high school athlete on the verge of obtaining a scholarship is threatened with a startling revelation about the etiology of his son’s success. Meanwhile, a stranger is hunting the stranger. He is ruthless, motivated by a human being’s most primitive instinct, and won’t stop until he gets the answers he wants. Adam is trying to find Corinne, as are others, a task made all the more difficult when everyone is lying to him, particularly some very dangerous and deadly people who will stop at nothing to conceal their activities.

Longtime fans of Coben and those enjoying his work for the first time will find much to love in this stand-alone title, which is honed with both his trademark style and some unique twists and turns that take the reader to unexpected and frightening places. Coben, who is seemingly incapable of writing badly in any event, has outdone himself with THE STRANGER.