The Intruder

A critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller when it was published in the 90s, The Intruder returns to print with urgency of today's headlines. Can a good man go too far to protect his family? That is the question underlying this gripping tale, which pulls the reader into its stranglehold of terror in the tradition of Dennis Lehane, Thomas Harris, and James Patterson, who called it "the best novel I've read in years." Jacob Schiff is a product of a tough city neighborhood who's managed to carve out a successful life with a loving family and a thriving law practice. But all of that is threatened when his wife, Dana, a psychiatric social worker, offers help and hope to a mentally disturbed homeless man named John Gates. When the patient decides Dana's family has somehow stolen the life he was meant to have, Gates begins to stalk them, generating violent confrontations and threats. The police offer no real solutions and so Schiff makes the mistake of his life: he recruits a day-laborer/street enforcer, Philip Cardi, to warn the homeless man off. That sets off a series of violent confrontations and escalating consequences that upend the lives of all the characters.