A literary architect of page-turning thrillers, Harlan Corben's 2015 novel The Stranger has been adapted by Netflix, marking his third original series by the streaming service after Safe and The Five. Corben often situates his mysteries amidst the cookie-cutter world of suburbia, where he peels back the layers of bucolic superficiality to reveal dark and disturbing secrets.
The Stranger series is no different, and over eight exciting episodes, viewers come to find out how the idyllic life of family man Adam Price has been turned upside down when The Stranger confronts him about his wife's disturbing past. From the change of location, to the gender swap of key players, there's no mystery how the changes from the book to the series add up to one engrossing UK crime thriller. Here are 10 differences between the book and the Netflix show.
THE SETTING
The majority of Harlan Corben's novels are set in the United States, and The Stranger is no different. It takes places principally in New Jersey, where the Price family lives, Ohio, where Heidi Dunn lives (along with police chief Johanna Griffin), and Pennsylvania where The Stranger operates.
The Netflix series transports the action to the fictional hamlet of Cedarfield of Greater Manchester, England, resulting in noticeable changes to the surrounding suburban culture. Adam's sons play football (soccer) instead of lacrosse, everyone asks if guests want a cup of tea and a scone, and very few residents own guns thanks to strict UK gun laws.
THE STRANGER
In the novel, The Stranger's name is Chris Taylor, a disillusioned young man who works for the company that makes it possible for Corrine Price to fake her pregnancy. Along with four other people, who are mostly in it for the cash, they dig up information on unsuspecting people and threaten to expose their darkest secrets unless they pay up.
In the show, "Chris" has been changed to "Chrissy," a bi-racial woman who is still traumatized by the fact that her mother disappeared when she was young, and that her father wasn't her biological parent. She only works with one accomplice, and together they're saving up to buy a beach bar.
THE TEENAGER SUBPLOT
Adam Price's sons don't have that much to do with the investigation of their mother's double life, and they certainly don't have an entire subplot of their own involving a bonfire, PCP, and a headless alpaca. Corben felt like he needed to alter the series enough so that fans of the book wouldn't feel like they'd figured everything out.
To give the teenager subplot some teeth, he brought in his young daughter Charlotte Corben, who is credited as the writer of Episode 5, which focuses largely on Thomas, Mike, and Daisy trying to sort out the strange circumstances they've become embroiled in.
PATRICK KATZ
Patrick Katz has a more robust home life in the novel raising three sons, one of whom has bone cancer. He takes a job doing sketchy security work in order to pay for his son Robby's expensive treatments, working primarily for a businessman named Larry Powell.
In the series, Katz has one daughter named Olivia, who attends the same school as Adam's sons. When she gets ill, they try to visit her at home, but her mother prevents anyone from seeing her. They eventually uncover the mystery that her mother suffers from Munchausen By Proxy, and has been slowly poisoning her with rat poison.
EDWARD PRICE
The novel doesn't feature Edward Price, Adam's estranged father and the unscrupulous property developer trying to tear down Martin Killane's home. He died of a heart attack when Adam was 16, and therefore doesn't have the extensive plot he has in the television series.
Having the Price patriarch try to force Martin Killane out of his home to build fancy new condos creates a better sense of tension on the series, especially when Killane is represented legally by Adam. We also learn he is the biological father of The Stranger by an affair with Martin's deceased wife, something never revealed in the novel.
MARTIN KILLANE
In the novel, Martin Killane's character is Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rinsky, a retired police officer who left the force to tend to his ill wife, who refuses to leave their home because she suffers from dementia and prefers to be around familiar surroundings.
In the series, Killane has killed his wife for threatening to leave him, and has stored her body in the walls of his home. This secret is why he doesn't want developer Edward Price to tear down his house, as well as discover the fact the affair with his wife resulted in a child (The Stranger).
DC WES ROSS
Police chief Johanna Griffin investigates the murders and various crimes in the novel with rookie partner Norbert Prendergast, a character who was possible due to the real-life Norbert Prendergast donating a significant amount to charity to be included.
Instead of Prendergast in the series, we get Johanna paired with DC Wes Ross, who she affectionately calls "the infant", and who provides much of the show's comic relief. Along with Mike, he's necessary to break some of the tension at just the right moments.
ADAM AS A SUSPECT
Adam becomes a murder suspect in Ingrid's death in the novel when he tracks her down using information given to him by a bribed security guard in the lacrosse club car park. Ingrid has been shot by Katz in her hotel room, but Johanna has reason to believe Adam was there, leading her to confront him at his home.
In the series, Johanna calls on Adam because she's discovered the key fob to Corinne's classroom at the scene of Heidi's murder. Katz has planted the key fob for crime scene investigators to find and divert evidence from the fact that he murdered Heidi.
ADAM'S LIFE IS BASED ON RICHARD ARMITAGE
While the rest of the cast had to audition, Richard Armitage (The Hobbit Trilogy) who played Adam Price, did not. Harlan Corben selected him for the part based on his previous acting credits, and Armitage revealed that after receiving the part, pieces of his own life ended up being integrated into the script.
Armitage explained to BT.com that in trying to decide how best to portray Adam Price on screen, he recorded certain biographical things from his own life, which ended up being useful to the writers in each episode to give the UK-version of the character more depth.
THE ENDING
The novel comes to its nail-biting conclusion when Johanna Griffin follows Adam and Tripp to Corinne's burial site. She later testifies that she overheard Tripp's confession, and uses his dead hand to scratch Adam's face and falsify evidence that Adam was forced to shoot him in self-defense. Tripp's family receives a huge life insurance payout.
In the final episode of the series, she also follows Adam and Tripp, but ends up wiping the gun clean of Adam's fingerprints and then stashing it in The Stranger's apartment. As it was Katz's personal weapon, he gets linked to Tripp's death, and since he's already going to jail for multiple crimes, she correctly concludes no one will care if he denies his guilt.