The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare’s colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland’s most famous story, “The Stranger,” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favourite literature.

 

To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her closest confidant, her diary, the only outlet she has for her darkest suspicions and fears about the case. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn't hers, left on the page of an old diary: "Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me."

 

Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger” has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?

 

Publisher: HMH | Genre: Gothic Mystery/Thriller | Source: Publisher | Rating: 3 Cups

How could I resist a gothic novel where the character’s favorite horror story is played out right in front of her?

 

Since her divorce, Clare Cassidy has focused her attention on two things: her daughter and the life and work of Gothic writer R.M. Holland. When her best friend, and fellow teacher, is murdered and a quote from Holland’s horror story, The Stranger is found next to her body, Clare becomes a person of interest. Although things take an alarming turn when Clare discovers someone, possibly the killer, has been writing in her journal. As events play out, Clare starts to realize that her favorite horror story is coming to life.

 

This one arrived, unexpectedly, a few months ago and I immediately added it to my FraterFeastRAT pile. I picked this one up the second day of the readathon and, I have to say, I was a bit surprised at how hard I struggled to get into the book. I was a good 30-40 pages in before this one caught my interest, which I found a bit odd because Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway mysteries hook me from the start.

 

The book is told from three different POVs. We have Clare, the teacher, who is sorting out her life after her divorce. She’s thrown a good amount of her time researching the life of R.M. Holland almost to the point she’s obsessed with this man. Clare’s not unlikable but I found her a bit hard to warm up to and I think that’s because there’s two parts to her: the reserved one she shows the world and the, I think, real part of herself, which she shares only with her diary.

 

Then there’s Georgia, Clare’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who is dating an older guy. She’s dabbling in a few secretive things that her mother doesn’t know about and trying to figure out her own path. I found Georgia to be a bit odd. She would say or do something then follow it with an internal thought, “that’s how a normal teenager would act” or “that’s what a normal teenager would do”. It was almost as if she was playing the part of a teenager rather than being one.

 

Finally, we round out the book with DS Harbinder Kaur, the lead investigator. She’s very judgmental towards Clare from the start due to Clare’s ‘upper crust’ style of clothing and the way she presents herself. I wasn’t sure I was going to like Harbinder, but as the book progressed, she became my favorite. It almost seemed that her story was a bit more layered than Clare’s and Georgia’s.

 

There’s a few mysteries going on. The first is the brutal murder of Ella, Clare’s best friend and fellow teacher, which happens to follow the murder in the (fictional) story The Stranger, wrote by the (fictional) gothic author R.M. Holland. Because Clare has studied Holland and The Stranger so closely, she immediately becomes suspect number one. Then we have the ‘Holland’ mysteries. There’s the mysterious death of his wife—did she trip or was she murdered? There’s also the mystery of whether or not Holland had a daughter. If he did have a daughter, what happened to her?

 

All of those threads are strung throughout the book; sadly, not all are handled with the same care. It irritated me because the author spent so much time crafting this fictional horror story and life of the author just to have it fall by the wayside because the ending and the reasoning came out of left field. I needed more from the ending or rather the reasoning.

 

While this has gothic elements, it almost seems like it’s a modern police procedural masquerading as a gothic novel, which is often the case of modern gothic mysteries. Having read the Ruth Galloway mysteries, which I feel is heavy on the modern gothic vibe; I was a little letdown by this one.

 

Overall, when I finally got into the book I like the story but the ending ruined the book for me. It left me disappointed as it felt like the author was running out of steam and just picked a random reason.