Lapena’s latest a lacklustre thriller

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This article was published 02/09/2017 (2978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Toronto lawyer-turned-novelist Shari Lapena’s previous thriller, The Couple Next Door, was the bestselling Canadian book of 2016.

Full disclosure: this reviewer has not read it. But if it’s anything like her followup, it did not deserve that distinction.

There are so many things wrong with Stranger in the House, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

Should one stress the plot twists that are about as twisty as the Trans-Canada through Saskatchewan? Maybe the characters who have as much depth as a kiddie pool? The fact that the book’s title sounds like a bad Lifetime movie? That it plays at being a whodunit, but has just three main characters?

No, it’s probably best to put the most emphasis on the terrible, terrible writing. One is willing to give these kinds of fast-paced, genre-fiction beach reads a bit of a pass — not everyone is Dennis Lehane or Gillian Flynn, and not every thriller has to be “literary” — but the present-tense prose here is impossible to forgive.

Replete with cliché, tedious description and rote dialogue, it turns what should be a breathless page-turner into a total slog.

The setup is this: loving husband Tom Krupp arrives home, looking forward to seeing Karen, his wife of two years. However, 24 Dogwood Dr. (an address needlessly repeated throughout the book) is empty, dinner half-completed and Karen’s purse and cellphone are still in the house.

When the police arrive at the doorstep of good old 24 Dogwood, it turns out Karen has been in a single-car accident, crashing her Honda into a telephone pole while travelling at high speed.

The blow to the head has resulted in amnesia (or has it?), so Karen is unable to explain to the police or her husband why she left home in such a hurry or what she was doing in a bad part of town.

Warning: if the telephone pole around which you wrap you car happens to be in a seedy neighbourhood, everyone, including the police, will naturally assume you were up to something nefarious, not merely in transit.

The book is filled with such false notes, unlikely assumptions and laughable police procedure.

In one hilarious passage, a newspaper article begins, “A local housewife, Karen Krupp, has been arrested…” Housewife? Modern newspapers would never use that kind of language and even if they did, Karen has a job outside the home.

It’s also clear neither Lapena nor her editors have read Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, which include: “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue,” and “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said.’”

Characters are constantly exclaiming, sighing or offering — and even when they just “say” something, it’s often wryly or nervously or… the adverbs go on and on, as if to make up for the fact that no one is ever saying anything interesting. Conversations include every dull facet of the exchange and every action. Below is an example, pulled at random (and edited to avoid spoilers); if you’re concerned Theresa will strain her neck from so much nodding, rest assured that she “shakes her head sadly” on the next page.

She nods. “May I see some identification?”

“Yes, of course.” He reaches for his identification. He also reaches for a letter (giving) informed consent to disclose information to her lawyer, Jack Calvin.

She pushes her glasses up higher on her nose and reads it. Then she nods briskly. “Okay, how can I help?”

“My client has been charged with murder.”

Theresa looks at him and nods tiredly.

Stranger in the House wants very much to have a Gone Girl flavour to it, as it becomes clear that Karen’s past is cloaked in mystery, and Tom isn’t necessarily squeaky-clean either. But there are no unreliable narrators here — for that to occur, the characters would have to have inner lives to betray or obfuscate.

Instead, improbability piles onto doubt, all rendered in dreary language that serves to suck any suspense out of the proceedings. Even beach reading deserves better than this.

Jill Wilson is a Free Press copy editor.