Strangers When We Meet

This is the history of an unfaithful husband — his illusions, his stratagems, his fears, his entrapment. The young husband in Evan Hunter’s new novel is not a philanderer, not a disturbed personality. He has been a responsible family man. He loves his wife. But at a moment when his ego is slightly bruised, he meets a woman, a neighbor, who gives him a dangerous new image of himself — the image of a man who is not fully alive. He is convinced, and he is caught. In Strangers When We Meet, Evan Hunter charts the progress of infidelity: the beginning of the affair — stage fright and an illusion of romance; the first small deceptions that multiply into a nightmarish entanglement of lies; the panic when the phone rings at home; the endless, tortuous arrangements for hurried meetings; the strained chance encounters in public (“Did I give myself away?”); the rising guilt and desperation. And in the background — the person who knows, the confidant who should never have been told, who might some evening drink too much and bring the walls crashing down.