Don't Talk to Strangers by Amanda Kyle Williams

Published by Bantam on July 1, 2014

A sheriff in rural Georgia hires Keye Street to consult regarding two abductions and murders of 13-year-old girls that occurred about ten years apart. Of course, the detectives and deputies who work for the sheriff resent her presence. Sadly, that's not the only plot thread in this novel that has been done before.

A surprising amount of the story is unoriginal. There is too little to distinguish this novel from the growing stacks of novels about detectives who search for serial killers. Amanda Kyle Williams sets up the usual array of innocent suspects in an effort to keep the reader from guessing the killer's identity. The killer is nevertheless all too easy to identify despite a final desperate attempt at misdirection. While the contrived ending is meant to shock the reader, I suspect most seasoned readers will roll their eyes and say "whatever."

As do many novels that feature profilers, Williams substitutes simplistic stereotypes of sex offenders for authentic character portrayals. The pop psychology analysis of serial killers that Keye provides -- emphasized here considerably more than in the first two novels -- is the familiar nonsense of fictional profilers. Her serial killer (like nearly every other fictional serial killer) can't resist taunting Keye by sending her messages. Another girl is abducted while Keye is on the case and it's a race against time as Keye tries to find the girl before she's killed. This has all been done so many times that, in the absence of a truly unexpected development, it became tiresome to read. The plot struck me as the work of a writer going through the motions who was unable to come up with anything new to write about.

Williams developed Keye Street as an engaging character in The Stranger You Seek. I liked the second novel in the series a bit less, but still enjoyed Keye's ongoing character development. In Don't Talk to Strangers, Williams abandons the complex character she created. The new Keye Street has become unbearably judgmental and self-righteous -- only she can solve the crime because only she really really really cares about the victims, and nobody else is working hard enough because they just don't care as much as she does. This is an unfortunate trend in modern police/detective novels and I'm sorry to see Williams succumb to it. I liked Keye better when she was too conscious of her own faults to be self-righteous. Of course, she's not quite so hard on the dreamy sheriff who wants to take her to bed. The "will she or won't she" story angle, like the rest of the plot, is predictable and unimaginative.

The supporting characters who helped make the first two books enjoyable are all but abandoned in this one. It seems as if Williams is also abandoning the sympathetic Keye Street she created in the first book in order to reposition Keye as yet another anger-consumed detective with profiling skills that border on the supernatural. Novels based on that character sketch are apparently successful so maybe Williams made the change to boost sales. In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Williams talks about all the people who advised her so that she could finally "get it right." It that explains the decline of this series, Williams should trust her own instincts and stop listening to advisors who want her to write formula fiction. They are guiding a once-promising writer into a wasteland of mediocrity.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams

Published by Bantam on August 30, 2011

In the real world, when they aren’t stating the obvious, criminal profilers are wrong about as often as they’re right.  In thriller world, profilers have a miraculous ability to understand the criminal mind.  That is certainly true of Keye Street, the former FBI profiler turned private investigator who stars in The Stranger You Seek.  Fortunately, profiling is a relatively small part of the story.

The Stranger You Seek is a novel of old and new.  The old:  Keye reacted to the ugliness she saw while investigating crime by turning to alcohol, eventually losing her job (hence her gig as a private investigator).  Keye employs an anti-establishment, counterculture computer hacker who can break into highly secure computers (thriller world is full of them and they all seem to work for private investigators).  Keye’s best friend is a police lieutenant who needs her help to find a serial killer.  Soon after Keye joins the hunt, the killer starts writing letters to her police lieutenant friend, taunting him with clues to the next victim.  And, of course, the hunters eventually become the hunted.

The new:  The serial killer writes a “fantasy” blog on a website for knife fetishists.  Keye does realistic bread-and-butter work (serving subpoenas, performing background checks, finding people who jumped bail) when she’s not chasing the killer.  Keye’s   Chinese mother worked as a stripper.  Keye puts yellow mustard on her jalapeño-infused hash browns.

Yes, I’m grasping at straws:  the novel is more old than new.  I liked it anyway.  Amanda Kyle Williams gives her primary characters interesting personalities and crafts a well-written story that, if not entirely original, is more entertaining than most. 

Stories about serial killers often challenge the reader to find the pattern that links the killings.  The Stranger You Seek does that effectively.  On the other hand, the revelation of the killer’s identity is forced.  Although it seems to have been designed to shock the reader, I doubt that many will have that reaction.  Williams tacks on a climax that surprised me but didn’t persuade me; it was so incongruous that it elicited a “you’ve got to be kidding” response.  Further impairing the story’s credibility is Keye’s insistence that there isn’t enough evidence to arrest the killer even after the killer confesses to her.  There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to corroborate the confession and criminals are convicted every day on the basis of their unrecorded admissions.  Keye would surely know that.  The killer is plainly left free only to set up the novel’s climax.

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed reading The Stranger You Seek.  The novel benefits from solid writing, engaging characters, and appealing humor.  The grins induced by the story’s lighter moments as Keye finds creative ways to serve subpoenas and apprehend bail jumpers made me think that the novel would have worked better as the story of Keye’s luckless life without forcing a serial killer into the mix.

On the strength of Williams’ writing skill, I’m encouraged to read the next Keye Street novel.  I hope she continues to develop her offbeat centralcharacter without feeling the need to craft a contrived plot for the sake of adhering to the norms of thriller world. 

RECOMMENDED