Intruder [Hardcover]

‘Better than Grisham, better than Patricia Cornwell. I loved it’
James Patterson

A contender for the Grisham/Turow market; an ‘urban Cape Fear’ in which an ambitious New York lawyer, just as he is reaching the peak of his career, finds everything he has worked so hard to achieve is threatened by the arrival in his life of The Intruder, a psychotic homeless bum.

Jake Schiff is a prominent Manhattan lawyer. He can’t go around whacking people just because he has a problem with them, but when John Gault enters his life he finds himself asking someone to do just that. John G is a subway driver who has cracked up and quit his job when too many people threw themselves in front of his train. He soon becomes a psychotic homeless drug addicted bum who begins to stalk Jake’s wife Dana, a hospital psychiatric worker assigned to John G’s case. When John G threatens Jake and Dana’s teenage son with a knife, Jake snaps and allows Phil, a crazed Italian-American gangster from his old neighbourhood, to go after John G with a baseball bat. A man is killed and suddenly Jake’s glittering career and all he has worked so hard to achieve is in ruins when he is arrested for murder.

Jake Schiff has made it. He's a successful Manhattan lawyer and he's finally acquired the dream home for the family he cherishes: Dana, a psychiatric social worker, and Alex, their teenage son.

Then the Intruder enters their lives.

John G is a homeless addict who has become Dana's patient. He begins to stalk her and menace the family. When he threatens Alex with a knife Jake snaps. Driven to breaking-point by fear and desperation, Jake agrees to the terrifying action suggested by Phil, an Italian-American from Jake's old neighbourhood, and suddenly Jake's glittering career and all he has worked so hard to achieve for his family is threatened when he is arrested for murder.

How far will a man go to protect his family? Is the question underlying this gripping tale of a family fighting for its life, pulling the reader into its stranglehold of terror in the tradition of an urban Cape Fear.

Peter Blauner was born in New York City in 1959 and since graduating from Wesleyan University in 1982 has worked as a journalist on New York Magazine, writing about crime and politics. He has done voluntary work as a probation officer, a school-teacher and in a homeless shelter. He is the author of two previous novels, SLOW MOTION RIOT (winner of Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel from Mystery Writers of America) and CASINO MOON (both Viking/ Penguin in UK).