The Intruder - Hardcover

Peter Blauner's dark thriller The Intruder centers on John Gates, a homeless man in Manhattan who has come to believe that a lawyer named Jake Schiff has stolen his family and ruined his life. When Schiff takes up extreme measures to put an end to Gates' harassment, the world is turned upside down for both men. Blauner's characterizations are taut and he excels at creating short, edgy scenes that fray at the nerves as this morality play careens toward its inevitable conclusion.

Can a good man go too far to protect his family? That is the question underlying this gripping tale of a family fighting for its life, which pulls the reader into its stranglehold of terror in the tradition of Straw Dogs and Cape Fear. Having survived a childhood of physical beatings and psychological torture, successful Manhattan lawyer Jacob Schiff cherishes his stable family life with his wife, Dana, a psychiatric social worker, and their teenage son, Alex. But Jake sees it all unraveling when John Gates, a homeless man who has become Dana's patient, starts stalking her and menacing the family. As Gates's behavior becomes even more bizarre and violent, and no one seems able to stop him, Jake is driven to the breaking point by fear and desperation and takes a fatal step that could destroy everything he cares about.