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Clare Cassidy has long been a fan of a gothic short story called “The Stranger,” in which a man sees two of his classmates right after they’ve been brutally murdered and later learns of more of their fellow classmates dying each year on the anniversary of the original killings. Clare is an English teacher to high school students and teaches a class on the story every year for a weeklong adult education session. Her connection to the story makes it even more upsetting when a good friend and colleague is stabbed and a line from the story is left next to her body.
As police investigate, they feel it’s likely that the murderer is someone Clare knows. Clare has also kept a diary for years, and as she writes in it about what she’s going through with the loss of her friend and the fear about a murderer being close by, she discovers one day that someone has written a brief note in her diary: Hello Clare. You don’t know me.She doesn’t know how her diary was breached; she keeps it in a safe place and her old diaries locked up. The terror of “The Stranger” is now not just an old story she enjoys and teaches about every year; it is somehow seeping into reality. Just as the protagonist of the story can’t seem to escape his doom, Clare doesn’t know how she and her teenage daughter can stay safe with a murderer on the loose.
I enjoy gothic tales and thought The Stranger Diaries would be particularly entertaining given the inclusion of a gothic story as part of the plot. Author Elly Griffiths crafts the story within the novel and gives it an authentic feel of the supposed time period with fitting style, and parts of it crop up throughout the narrative. As the book goes along, the point of view switches among Clare and one of the lead detectives and even Clare’s teen daughter, and they share developments and opinions about each other and potential suspects. Along the way, the reader is never quite sure who the guilty party may truly be. I didn’t guess it myself until it was revealed, which I suppose is a good thing. But it didn’t quite have the impact I would have expected, for some reason. Entertaining novel and murder mystery nonetheless.
Rated: Moderate.There is one instance of strong language and there are occasional uses of mild and moderate language. Sexual content includes some scenes of making out, with some very brief references to a bit more than kissing, as well as references to affairs. Violence includes a few murders, with some description of blood from stabbings. There is evidence of stalking by at least one or two men.
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