The Interloper

The debut from the author of Mouth to Mouth, a novel about obsession that makes for obsessive reading. All Owen Patterson wants is an normal life, a happy marriage, and a stable family. But following the brutal and random murder of his brother-in-law, that dream is shattered. A year later, his wife is still in mourning and his in-laws won't talk about anything but their dead son. The murderer, Henry Joseph Raven, has been put in prison, but as far as Owen is concerned, prison isn't punishment enough. He embarks on a quest to balance the scales of justice, writing letters to Henry Raven under the pseudonym Lily Hazelton. His plan: to seduce the murderer, make him fall in love with his fictional correspondent, and then break his heart. From one letter to the next, Lily Hazelton develops into a curious amalgam of details from Owen's imagination, snatches of his difficult childhood, and memories of his cousin Eileen, a suicide who was his first true love. Not entirely in control of his own creation, Owen dives headfirst into the correspondence, only to find himself caught in the trap he's set for Henry Raven. Bringing together an epistolary game of cat and mouse with the harrowing record of one man's psychological collapse, The Interloper is a compelling and original debut from a bold new writer. As assured and sumptuously written as any first novel I've encountered--Antoine Wilson's prose sings, and the story he tells here is both clever and compelling. This is writing at its very best. -- T. Coraghessan Boyle