Lying With Strangers by James Grippando

I got this book from HarperCollinsCanada – The Reading Group on MySpace.

Lying with Strangers was easy to read with a straightforward storyline. I zipped through it in just a few days. The ending contained some good twists that surprised me.

[Added July 19, 2007] The prologue, with Rudy on the subway, was pretty good. It was descriptive, suspenseful and drew me right in. Also, the character Rudy was a good scary villain. He was more believable than some of the others. A couple of times he gave me goose bumps.

However, at times it was unbelievable and over the top. [More about this later. Because any examples are likely to be spoilers, I’ve added those to the end.] I was also disappointed that Kevin’s book and the subsequent lawsuit, which had such promise as a storyline. It sort of fizzled after building up good momentum. [Is this another spoiler?]

As the title suggests, these characters were strangers. Indeed! Did these people know each other at all? It seemed that everyone had a deep dark secret they were keeping from the others. A few times, I almost laughed out loud at the levels of deceit. Probably not the reaction the author was looking for.

I still enjoyed reading it, but a few things made me squirm. As for a recommendation? Hmmmm...give it a try, if you want. You could do a whole lot worse.

**************spoilers***********************
As I said above the story line was unbelievable at times. Here are a few examples:
1) Kevin would not have remembered what earrings Sandra was wearing the one night they had sex. The dress? Maybe. The earrings? Not likely.
2) RG posing as a woman and Kevin didn’t notice. Not too many man make convincing a woman. You’d think he’d notice.
3) Gary’s interaction with Peyton: after she got drunk, the rose on her locker, the stolen computer. There was something odd about those exchanges.

I also thought parts of the story were over the top. In a few places there were several things going wrong as if only one thing wasn’t good enough. For example, Kevin was trying to get to his car in a snow storm….he drops his keys in the snow, lock is iced over, snow falls down his collar, too much snow on the windshield, ice under the snow, scrapes his knuckles trying to get it off, then his car won’t start.
*************end of spoilers********************

There you have it. Would I read another book by this author? If the timing was right, I might.