Okay, so we admitted in the previous Turnrow 20 post that truth was stranger and often more frightening than fiction. Still, who doesn't love a good creepy novel now and then? For more serial killer reading, this time fictional, we recommend The Stranger You Seek by debut novelist Amanda Kyle Williams.
We've been handing this novel to impatient Greg Iles fans who are dismayed to learn that his new novel has been delayed again, this time until late next year. Like Greg, newcomer Williams knows how to keep readers up past their bedtime with plot-driven suspense and a knack for shock and twists.
We were instantly captivated by the heroine in The Stranger You Seek, Keye Street, a Southern-raised Asian-American and recovering alcoholic who does private investigator work after being asked to leave the FBI. A detective at the Atlanta police department sometimes seeks her help for particularly twisted murders — Street's speciality — and thus she becomes involved in the case of a serial killer terrorizing Atlanta.
More than just clever plotting, this novel's true allure is its ability to create doubt within the reader, to make us suspect the people in our lives who seem the least harmless or maybe those we simply ignore ... at our peril. There's something sinister and believable about her killer that made us jump up to check the locks — even during the daytime — and reminded us of another great Southern suspense writer, Thomas Harris of Hannibal Lecter fame.
It's a fun scare, the kind you'll read two dozen mystery novels to find. We look forward to seeing what Williams will come up with in at least two more follow-up Street novels, one due next fall.
