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Summary
Summary
The papers have called me a monster. You've either concluded that I am a braggart as well as a sadist or that I have a deep and driving need to be caught and punished.
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 before another victim meets a shattering end, A.P.D. lieutenant Aaron Rauser turns to the one person he knows can penetrate a deranged mind: ex-FBI profiler Keye Street.
And you must certainly be wondering if I am, in fact, the stranger you seek.
Keye was a rising young star at the Bureau until addiction derailed her career and her life. Now sober and fighting to stay so, Keye picks up jobs where she can get them: catching adulterers, serving subpoenas, chasing down bailjumpers, and dodging the occasional bullet. With multiple victims, little to go on, and an entire police force looking for direction, the last thing Keye wants is to be pulled into the firestorm of Atlanta's worst nightmare.
Shall I convince you?
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.
An electrifying thriller debut, The Stranger You Seek introduces a brash, flawed, and unforgettable heroine in a complex, twisting novel that takes readers deep into a sultry Southern summer, a city in the grips of chaos, and a harrowing cat-and-mouse game no reader will ever forget.
Author Notes
Amanda Kyle Williams was born in Virginia on August 17, 1957. She had undiagnosed dyslexia and dropped out of high school. As a teenager and young adult she struggled with substance abuse and addiction. Before becoming an author, she worked as a pet sitter, house painter, embroiderer, and process server. She wrote the Madison McGuire series and the Keye Street series. She was also a freelancer for the Southern Voice and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She died from endometrial cancer on August 31, 2018 at the age of 61.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Williams makes her debut with an explosive, unpredictable, and psychologically complex thriller that turns crime fiction cliches inside out. Sarcastic and fast-thinking independent investigator Keye Street, a Chinese-American whose alcoholism got her booted from her FBI profiling job four years earlier, makes a living serving subpoenas, tracking down bail jumpers, and tackling the oddest of odd jobs. When a friend from the Atlanta PD calls her in to help track down a mysterious serial killer, Keye soon finds herself battling past ghosts-from her murdered grandparents to an unscrupulous former employer-while attempting to protect herself and her loved ones from a sadistic mastermind whose games become increasingly deadly. A sweet "friends first" romance, a diverse cast, and doses of humor enhance the relentless hairpin action. Those looking for a strong female protagonist not a sexpot and as intelligent, tough, and flawed as any male thriller hero will be richly rewarded. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A suspenseful tale of a clever crime-solver who gets a little too close to the action.Lt. Aaron Rauser needs help catching what seems to be a new serial killer in his Atlanta stomping ground. He knows that the woman for the job is his old friend and crime-solving compatriot Keye Street. Keye's not the kind of woman you mess around with, and while the folks on the force don't like that she's freelancing in their department, there's not much they can do about it. Keye was on track to be a well-respected FBI profiler before an inconvenient addiction to booze got in the way. Now that she's back on her feet, this tough and whip-smart investigator has opened her own small-time business. Although chasing bail jumpers keeps Keye and her hacker sidekick Neil in modest money, hunting down the deranged psychopath the Atlanta papers have dubbed the Wishbone Killer is just Keye's piece of pie. The trouble is that the closer Keye seems to get to Wishbone, the more the killer seems to know about her: her thoughts, her feelings and even a few things she's barely admitted to herself. As the action shifts from seemingly random events to targeted, graphic and brutal acts of violence, Keye is thrust from the role of hunter to hunted.Williams (Club Twelve, 1994, etc.) creates a frightening and occasionally witty novel, perfect for those who can sleep with one eye open. Think Mary Higgins Clark with an edge.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
There's something compelling about a damaged PI who fights her own personal demons while hunting for a serial killer. Keye Street, a thirtysomething Asian American who witnessed the murders of her grandparents when she was five, is a divorced recovering alcoholic who started her own company after being fired as an FBI profiler. But she's skilled and intuitive enough that her best friend, Aaron Rauser, Atlanta homicide cop, asks for her help in finding the media-dubbed Wishbone Killer, who leaves seemingly unrelated victims brutally stabbed, bitten, and sometimes sexually mutilated. As the murders multiply, alcohol beckons to Street, particularly when she and Rauser get taunting e-mails from the killer and are in increasing danger themselves. Williams, author of the Madison McGuire paperback mysteries published in the early 1990s, has the makings of a winning series here, with Bantam set to publish the next two Keye Street books. This is a character-driven, nonstop thriller with flashes of wit and romance that builds to a harrowing climax; fans of the genre will want to get in at the start.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Wouldn't it be nice, Leonard Rosen asks in his first novel, ALL CRY CHAOS (Permanent Press, $29), if the broken world we live in could be mended by the application of some universal mathematical formula? James Fenster, a Harvard professor who's in Amsterdam to deliver a paper before the World Trade Organization, has been working on that very thing. But before he can deliver his remarks on "The Mathematical Inevitability of a One-World Economy," a bomb charged with rocket fuel delivers a surgical strike on his hotel room. Henri Poincaré, a veteran Interpol agent, seems the ideal man to investigate the murder, since he's the great-grandson of the mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré and something of a brain himself. "So who kills a mathematician, other than another mathematician?" his young protégé wants to know. Poincaré turns up some promising candidates, one of them a financier who funded some of Fenster's work in hopes of applying it to the stock market, another a brilliant economist turned political provocateur. There's even a group of religious fundamentalists intent on creating the chaos that would hasten the Second Coming. With the exception of the victim's former fiancée, whose suspicious behavior has also made her a person of interest, these suspects are all sold on the idea that "human behavior can be modeled mathematically, just as any complex, dynamic system in nature can be modeled." Rosen has a fine detective in Poincaré, whose supple mind can wrap itself around the more abstract implications of Fenster's theories, including the notion that proof of a grand architectural design underneath all the world's chaos might argue for the existence of a grand architect. But this thoughtful detective is constantly being pulled off the case, pressed into strenuous action by an overwrought thriller subplot. If someone hadn't bumped off Fenster, he might have found a mathematical solution for unifying this fractured plot. Guido Guerrieri, the amiable protagonist of a series of legal mysteries by Gianrico Carofiglio, doesn't inspire much confidence as a criminal investigator, but he's wonderful company on late-night walks through the city of Bari, Italy, brooding on lost loves and misspent lives and all those other sad subjects men obsess about during a midlife crisis. In TEMPORARY PERFECTIONS (Rizzoli Ex Libris, $24.95), this criminal defense lawyer must find a solid legal argument to keep the police from closing the file on a missing college student. Taking guidance from the detectives in crime novels, he educates himself in investigative procedures, only to lose his head over the pretty college girls he interviews. Carofiglio's writing also has its entertaining quirks, in Antony Shugaar's idiomatic translation. Long passages are devoted to memorable but extraneous characters like the taxi driver who keeps a library in his cab. But wherever it strays, the narrative keeps coming back to Guerrieri and the thoughts that rattle around in his head, often spilling out before he can stop them. "Atlanta had a long history of spree and serial murders," Amanda Kyle Williams reminds us in her first suspense novel, THE STRANGER YOU SEEK (Bantam, $25). So the lunatic met here - a disciplined sadist who sends taunting letters to the police - fits right in. While bounty hunters don't normally get involved in murder cases, Keye Street, the smart and competent protagonist, was once an F.B.I. profiler (and has a personal relationship with the lead investigator), which qualifies her as a consultant. Williams handles crime scene procedures with assurance, uses forthright language to portray a frightful killer and isn't above injecting a bit of Southern humor into a grim situation. But Keye provides the heartbeat of this novel. While she isn't very impressive as a profiler, she's terrific when going about her day job: listening to the whining of a crooked accountant, stuffing herself with home cooking on a trip to the country to find a missing cow or just dreaming up clever ways to serve a summons. The Spanish city of Valencia looks dazzling in Jason Webster's first novel, OR THE BULL KILLS YOU (Minotaur, $24.99), which opens just before the "pyromaniac spring fiesta" known as Fallas and swiftly moves into the bull ring. Chief Inspector Max Cámara hates bullfighting, but this civilized cop becomes immersed in its dramatic rituals and divisive history when someone murders a celebrated young matador. Even as the violence escalates and the symbolism thickens, the estimable Inspector Cámara remains open-minded, if a bit cynical about the grand follies of his beautiful city. People like D. E. Johnson must dream about traveling back to the beginning of the last century just to ride in a big Hupmobile roadster or a sleek Pierce-Arrow touring car or maybe a luxurious Detroit Electric coupe. In Johnson's second historical novel, MOTOR CITY SHAKEDOWN (Minotaur, $24.99), Will Anderson, whose father owns the Anderson Electric Car Company, has his eye on the Torpedo runabout that his friend Edsel Ford personally modified in his father's factory. The storytelling is a bit crude in this boyish adventure, which tosses Will into a brutal gang war, fought over unionizing the auto industry. But the scenes of the Motor City, riding high on the industrial wave, are extraordinarily vivid - and best viewed from the front seat of one of those very snazzy cars. 'Who kills a mathematician,' asks a young Interpol agent, 'other than another mathematician?'