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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

The Stranger

Harlan Coben is a New Jersey writer whose thrillers translate particularly well into French film noir: Tell No One, adapted into the 2006 movie Ne le Dis à Personne, was a mix of high suspense and bon chic, bon genre. The same was true of Just One Look, which became the French series Juste un Regard, about secrets that upend the marriage of an attractive man and wife. The Stranger, on Netflix, is set in Britain, so the suburban couples are not quite as stylish (some neighbors wear tracksuits), but here, too, deeply buried lies rise up to disrupt serene domesticity. It turns out that the milieu doesn’t matter: like so many other Harlan Coben stories, The Stranger has too many twists and too many turns to turn off. —Alessandra Stanley