The Stranger You Seek: A Novel (Keye Street) - Softcover

Williams, Amanda Kyle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553593803 ISBN 13: 9780553593808

Publisher: Bantam, 2012

Synopsis

“[Amanda Kyle Williams] keeps the suspense taut and the humor snarky, with an ending that will have you slapping your foreheard over clues you missed.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In the sweltering heat of an Atlanta summer, a killer is pushing the city to its breaking point, preying on the unsuspecting, writing taunting letters to the media, promising more death. Desperate to stop the Wishbone Killer, A.P.D. lieutenant Aaron Rauser turns to the one person he knows can penetrate a deranged mind: Keye Street, an ex–FBI profiler and former addict who now picks up jobs where she can get them. But the last thing Keye wants is to be pulled into the firestorm of Atlanta’s worst nightmare. And then it suddenly becomes clear that the hunter has become the hunted—and the stranger she seeks is far closer than she ever dared imagine.

Praise for The Stranger You Seek

“The best fictional female P.I. since Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone. And with its shocking triple-twist climax, this is the best private eye debut since Dennis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War.”—The Plain Dealer
 
“A creepy, suspenseful, breathtaking ride . . . [Keye] Street is a unique and worthy addition to the rich tradition of damaged and tough private detectives.”—Associated Press
 
“An explosive, unpredictable, and psychologically complex thriller.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About this title

Review

Guest Reviewer: Tess Gerritsen on The Stranger You Seek

Tess Gerritsen is a physician as well as the New York Times best-selling author of medical thrillers and the Jane Rizzoli crime thrillers. Her latest book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, The Silent Girl, is available now.

Southern crime novels are a breed apart because of the weather. The heat is always a little more sweltering, the humidity always making everyone sweat just a bit more than their northern counterparts. There are the great New Orleans novels by James Lee Burke, and there is the Florida gang. There are even a few who set their most terrifying thrillers in the backwoods and bayous. For genuine heat, though, nothing beats Atlanta, a jewel of a city and the setting for Amanda Kyle Williams’s blistering debut thriller, The Stranger You Seek.

Keye Street immediately puts herself in the top echelon of suspense heroes. She’s a mess of fascinating contradictions—effortlessly brilliant on a case, totally inept in managing her own life. She is brutally funny and powerfully human. Williams has created one of the most realistic protagonists in crime fiction that I’ve had the thrill to read.

Of course, a southern crime novel needs a great villain, someone who amidst all this heat gets people running. The Stranger You Seek has a heck of a monster on the loose, a killer who is terrorizing Atlanta, taunting the police, and who seems a little too close to Keye to be just the stranger she seeks.

About the Author

Amanda Kyle Williams was the author of the Keye Street thriller series, including The Stranger You Seek, which was nominated for both a Townsend Award for Fiction and a Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, The Stranger in the Room, and Don’t Talk to Strangers. She died in 2018.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0553593803
• ISBN 13: 9780553593808
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400