Ponder Post: A Stranger in the House

Friday, I read the crime novel A Stranger in the House ©2017 by Shari Lapena. I started it during a 1:30 pm hair appointment and continued it immediately upon returning home, staying up an hour past my bedtime to finish it that same day. I had paused quasi-willingly to be a companion to my husband by going to a movie, putting away holiday decorations, eating dinner, and watching a brief TV show. I needed to disprove his claim that when I am into a good book, he ceases to exist. Once I'd negated his assertion, I eagerly returned to my novel. A Stranger in the House was a thriller, similarly engaging as the first book I read by the same author, The Couple Next Door (blog entry for June 24, 2018). The plot is intricate and grabbed me from the opening paragraph of the Prologue.

She doesn't belong here. She bolts out the back door of the abandoned restaurant, stumbling in the dark – most of the lights are burned out, or broken – her breath coming in loud rasps. She runs like a panicked animal to where she parked the car, hardly aware of what she is doing.

Chapter One: A man, Tom Krupp coming home late from his job as an accountant to an empty house in the suburbs, discovers that dinner preparations having been halted mid-slice on a tomato, no wife or note to be found. Karen, his wife of two years, apparently departed in a hurry leaving her purse and cell phone behind and forgetting to lock the front door. All these details are very atypical of the detail-focused and supremely organized woman he loves. What is going on? Where is she? Is it too soon for him to alert the police that she is missing?

Chapter Two: Three adolescent boys, out to smoke a joint in an abandoned restaurant come across a dead body, rifle it for its valuables, and leave. They do not report their discovery to the police.

If the reader suspects, because these scenarios are in the same book, that they scenarios are linked in some manner, he would be correct.  It is no spoiler to reveal that they are indeed related. But I am lured in to the novel to learn specifically how theses crimes are connected. Detective Rasbach and his fellow investigator Jennings lead the reader through a labyrinth of logic with sound, solid detective work. They are excellent investigators in a manner similar to Sargent Joe Webb and his sidekick Officer Joe Gannon in the 1950's TV series Dragnet. They seek the FACTS. While Rasbach and Jennings are both scrupulous in harvesting evidence, each also has a strong ability to assess a suspect's moral character and judge the candor in his/her responses.

It is the precisely the characters' analysis and development however, that I highly appreciate in Shari Lapena's crime mystery work. Their doubts, their thought processes, and the revelation of their innermost fears and longings put the word "psychological" in the genre "psychological thriller". This book is much more than "Just the facts, ma'am". Do the characters waver in their trust and support of each other? Do the facts, or lack thereof, drive a wedge between previously committed companions? Can a stalwart faith be infused with doubt? As these feelings unfold, so does the mystery. I give A Stranger in the House four stars. I like the writing style and pace of the author; the plot and characters merit a  strong recommendation. I only deducted one star because I favored Lapena's previous novel The Couple Next Door, which I had given five stars. Perhaps my repeat encounter with the author siphoned away a bit of her novelty, though I admit I was blindsided by a twist near the end. What really are the facts, ma'am?