The Stranger

The Stranger is the second novel by bestselling German author, Melanie Raabe. It is 2015, and Sarah Peterson has just learned that her husband Philip, missing for seven years and presumed dead by many, has been released by his Columbian captors and is on his way home. But the man she greets at the airport with her eight-year-old son, Leo, the man they've brought back from South America? That's not her husband, no matter what they all say. And now this imposter, this stranger is in her house!

Leo picks up on Sarah's disquiet and insists on staying with friends, for which she is grateful. But this man, with his resemblance to Philip, but also, to her anyway, his blatant differences: why is he here? He is quite charming in the presence of others, but Sarah feels threatened by him, by certain remarks he makes to her in private. Philip was a rich man: is the stranger after the money? But he seems to know everything about her, including an incident that Sarah has tried to forget. Perhaps the stranger's appearance concerns that awful time?

Except for flashbacks, the bulk of the story is told over three days, from alternating perspectives: Sarah, in the first person; and The Stranger, in the third person. But the reader soon understands that these narrators may well be unreliable; it begins to seem prudent to question their honesty and to wonder if they are perhaps suppressing certain memories. Raabe cleverly sets up her story, inserting twists and red herrings so that the reader is kept guessing until the final, staggering reveal. Flawlessly translated from German by Imogen Taylor, this page turner is even better than Raabe's debut.