A feminist heroine
Would you kill for $42 million if you thought you could get away with it? Of course we think of ourselves as good, moral people. But so much money would set you up for life — your loved ones, too. And the theft wouldn’t be reported. Dirty money. Think about it. Be honest.
That is the plot of Shari Lapena’s A Stranger In The House. Her heroine Karen Krupp allows that she’s greedy, but not violent. Living in a suburb of the Big Apple, earning enough to get by, she doesn’t expect a knight in shining armour to come her way.
Splurging her savings, she takes a trip to Las Vegas. On the train she meets Robert. He takes a fancy to her. Calling himself a successful antiques dealer, he has money to burn. He neglects to mention that antiques are his cover. Really, his cash flow comes from money laundering.
Though well provided for, love doesn’t enter the equation. How to get into his safe becomes Karen’s obsession. An accomplished liar, she tells one after the other, such as being an abused wife. After three years they split, her friend Brigid across the way sets up with Robert, and Karen gets Tom, an accountant.
The author describes Brigid as three short of a sixpack, forever knitting. Seeing through Karen’s lies, she takes to spying on Karen (and stalking) her no longer friend, breaking into her home. She “happens” to be there when Karen kills Robert.
Karen is arrested and tried, but the eyewitness is discredited as a kook and Karen is released, along with the $2 million she finally got her hands on. Tom doesn’t know what to believe, yet still loves her. The reader is left on the note that Brigid is planning revenge.
Shari Lapena is clearly a feminist, portraying women as cleverer and tougher than men. Women have a “real me” and present only that part of themselves they want men to see. After marriage they reveal a little more. Karen, thief, murderer, is as real as it gets.
Her character will shake men up.