A Stranger Lies There
by Stephen Santogrossi
Published by St. Martin’s Press
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Reviewed by Diane Kasperski
A Stranger Lies There starts off with a dead body! Tim Ryder, who has his own workshop where he creates beautiful furniture, woke up one morning to find a dead body on his lawn.
Thirty years before, Tim had fallen in with Glenn Turret, a radical, supposed-political hippie during the early 70s. Tim, Turret and friends were going to change the world. During a bank heist gone bad, Tim’s friends are shot and he finds out the truth about Glenn Turret—and it’s not pretty. Tim turns Turret into the police, does time himself and spends the next 30 years trying to forget that time in his life.
Now there is a dead body on his lawn and the because of his background the police are suspicious of Tim. Tim has his own theories of what is going on, including the possibility that Turret is behind it because he was just released from jail. He doesn’t feel the police are investigating and moving forward in the case fast enough—especially after his wife is murdered. Tim decides to take it upon himself to investigate, which leads him all the way across the country to New York City and back to California.
Author Stephen Santogrossi starts off with a very intriguing beginning in A Stranger Lies There. A dead body on a lawn, a violent past of the protagonist—but then the forward motion of the story kind of slumps. The pace does pick up the last third of the book.
I’m not sure I can believe that a carpenter who makes furniture would go to the extent Tim Ryder did to solve the case, even considering that his wife was murdered. He has no investigative or law enforcement background.
Armchair Interviews: Delight in a very surprising end.