REVIEW "A Stranger At The Door"
One of the things I find most odd about human memory is which specific things are retained and which are forgotten.
Paradoxically, it seems like we always remember the useless things — that toilet paper jingle from 1997, the names of all of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s children, the specific table in the diner on which your college roommate barfed during a particularly rough night out. But the actually useful bits — your locker combination, your online banking password, the conversion between cups and ounces — somehow slip right through the sieve.
Evidence of the truth of this axiom is one totally-meaningless-to-me event that I recollect with stunning clarity. I remember vividly sitting in a college English class and meeting a girl who had a major that was adjacent to mine. This girl decided to tell me — on our first meeting, no less — that her roommates dealt drugs out of their apartment — obviously, I must not give off a “narc” vibe 🤷♀️.
I laughed, thinking that she was joking. But her response to my laughter didn't suggest that she expected me to find it funny. Quite the contrary, her response suggested that she felt like she just told me something important, serious, and potentially problematic.
Why she decided to share this information with a complete stranger with whom she was merely supposed to engage in peer editing, I literally have no idea. But she did.
I didn’t really believe her at the time. But then, several weeks later, as we left class at approximately the same time, I saw what I can only assume were her roommates picking her up from outside University Hall in a shiny new white Escalade — definitely not the type of car he would commonly see two college-age boys driving in relatively rural Ohio.
While this experience is one that could obviously be moved into the mental wastebasket and disposed of, I think I retain it not because it has impacted my life since, but instead because it was my closest real-life brush with rule-breaking.
Though I really had not thought of this obviously inconsequential — for me — exchange in quite some time, my mind immediately flitted back to it as I read A Stranger At The Door by Jason Pinter, which featured illegality in basically plain sight.
As this book opens, we are reunited with Rachel Marin, the tough-as-nails protagonist with whom we first became acquainted in Pinter’s Hide Away. A single mother-of-two with a ridiculously messy past, Marin has hardened both her body and her heart in an attempt to make her future victimization less likely.
Since we last saw her she has opened her heart to someone new, though: Detective John Serrano, a local cop who she met and fell in lust with during the events of the preceding novel. Due primarily to her shitty past, Rachel’s relationship with Serrano, who has his own heavy baggage, has moved relatively slowly. Nevertheless, by the start of this novel, they have grown accustomed to — and somewhat dependent upon — each other’s company.
It’s fortunate for Rachel that she now has someone on whom to lean as her teenaged son, Eric, has recently started to assert himself as a soon-to-be adult. He’s now trying to move out from under the protective wing with which Rachel is trying to shield him.
Rachel’s desire to push back against her son’s attempts to assert himself is intensified by a tragedy that hits too close to home. The science teacher at Eric’s school is found dead in a house fire. Even more alarmingly, as the police investigate, they discover that his death wasn’t a pizza-bites-left-in-the-oven-until-they-reach-their-combustion-point-style freak accident, but instead a particularly brutal murder.
It takes very little investigating to narrow the focus down to a few likely suspects. Teens who attend the same school as Eric. But, as Rachel and Serrano draw closer to these likely culpable teens, they find those teens trying to draw Eric into their midst.
Her son now directly in harm’s way, Rachel’s dedication to solving the case deepens, and her willingness to do whatever it takes to see justice served intensifies.
The thing that induced me to fall in love with the first novel in this Pinter series — which appeared on our Top 11 of 2020 — was the protagonist. Rachel Marin is a gritty, acerbic woman with a heart of gold and an admirable dedication to making right what once went wrong. She shined here again, a bold and commanding force who was strengthened by her past trauma and determined to use this strength to fight for what is right.
Honestly, I think I would enjoy any book in which she played a central role.
And it’s not just Rachel who is a strong character. Characterization in general appears to be a strength of Pinter as the secondary characters are just as dynamic and engaging. From Detective John Serrano, who will never quite get over the son he lost so many years ago to his partner Detective Leslie Tally, a black, lesbian cop whose strengths make up for Serrano’s weaknesses, this novel — like the one that came before it — was rich in characters with hidden depth and yet-untapped potential.
The inarguable strength of these characters cannot fully make up for the primary weakness of this novel: the mystery itself.
In this book, the mystery was a little too clunky — a bit too multi-faceted and complex. This made it hard to really focus on one crime — hard to set your sights on one villain — which, in turn, made the novel drag a bit.
Much like a teenager, disgruntled because he was forced to get out of bed before noon, the plot of this novel, at times, just plodded along. It was like that teenager that you still love, but you wish would hurry the fuck up.
That said, this twisty plot did ultimately arrive at a satisfying and realistic resolution, even if it seemed to take the long way home.
Fans of the Rachel Marin series will be satisfied by this second novel, though they likely won’t be quite as enamored with it as they were with the first.
It earns a solid 4 out of 5 cocktails.
Though I am not a people person in real life, I am all about the people — or, characters that is — when it comes to my books. I often find myself falling in love with characters, particularly strong-willed ones. Who is your favorite strong-willed protagonist? Tell me about him or her in the comments, below.
I think I’m going to change directions with my next read. Want to see what I pick? Subscribe to updates in the sidebar and follow me on Goodreads.
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