52 pages • 1-hour read
A Stranger in the House
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Chapters 31-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of domestic abuse, death by suicide, and mental illness.
Chapter 31 Summary
Detective Rasbach thinks Karen must be terrified. He assumes she probably faked her death to escape an abusive husband.
That evening, Karen is about to take a bath when she notices that the stopper of her perfume bottle is missing. She panics and calls Tom. He suggests that maybe she is just mistaken about the stopper because of the head injury and stress. She tells him that she is hypervigilant about details like the stopper “because for years, if [she] didn’t do something just right […] [she]’d get the living shit beat out of [her]” (185). He is shocked at her raw emotion. Tom says that since Robert is dead, someone else must have been in their house. She tells him not to call the police.
Chapter 32 Summary
Brigid smells the perfume on her wrist while she waits for Tom and Karen to go to sleep. Her husband, Bob, is away at work. She does not have much in her life besides her knitting and watching the Krupps. She has a fantasy of living their life. When they are out, she uses the copy of a spare key she had made while she was seeing Tom to let herself into the Krupp residence and go through their things. She wants Tom back. She is furious with Karen for putting Tom through so much. She thinks that once Karen is out of the picture, she will be able to get back together with Tom.
Tom is thrown by all the revelations about how little he knew about his wife. He is troubled she took the gloves with her to meet Robert, which suggests she was intending to kill Robert. He wonders if “he can live with” (192) the fact she killed Robert.
Chapter 33 Summary
The next day, Detectives Rasbach and Jennings arrest Karen. She faints when they put the handcuffs on her.
Tom and Jack Calvin meet Karen at the police station. Calvin instructs Karen not to reply to any of the detectives’ questions. In the interview, Detective Rasbach tells Karen that they suspect she killed Robert Traynor. He tells her they think she faked her death to leave him because he was abusive and then killed him once he revealed he knew where she lived. However, they still have not found the gun. He notes that if she had not forgotten the gloves at the scene, she likely would have gotten away with murder.
Chapter 34 Summary
Brigid is delighted that Karen has been arrested. She imagines soon she will be with Tom again.
Tom returns home. He is in shock about the arrest. He is struck by how “much stronger and braver” (202) his wife is than him. He begins drinking beers on an empty stomach. He is sitting out on his back patio when Brigid comes over. He offers her a drink. She makes them martinis. He tells Brigid that Karen has been arrested for murder and Brigid feigns shock.
Karen spends the night in a jail cell. She wishes she was with Tom so “they could comfort each other” (209).
Chapter 35 Summary
Brigid tells Tom that on the night of the murder, she followed Karen when she saw Karen rush out of the house. Brigid saw Karen walk into the restaurant wearing the gloves and carrying a gun. She then heard three gunshots. She saw Karen rush out of the restaurant, take off and drop the gloves, and drive off. Brigid then entered the restaurant and saw the man dead on the floor. She isn’t sure what happened to the gun. Tom says Brigid doesn’t know if Karen actually shot the man. Brigid implies she will not tell the police what she saw if Tom has sex with her, and he “succumbs helplessly” to her.
The next morning, Karen and Calvin are at the courthouse for Karen’s arraignment. She is anxious because Tom is late. Calvin says he will look into Robert’s life in Las Vegas to learn if he had any enemies there who may have murdered him. They will also get the house fingerprinted to learn who was in there. Tom finally arrives, looking disheveled. He reassures Karen that he believes she did not murder Robert.
Chapter 36 Summary
Brigid is thrilled she finally reunited with Tom. She is completely infatuated with him and thinks about how they had sex the night before in Tom and Karen’s bedroom. She hatches a plan to ensure Karen is convicted of the murder so she can have Tom to herself.
Tom returns home. He is disgusted with himself.
Jack Calvin goes to Las Vegas. He meets with a counselor at a battered women’s shelter who tells him that Karen had been meeting with her for about a year to get advice on how to leave her husband. The counselor, Stacy Howell, had assumed Karen (Georgina) had been murdered by Robert, but the police had looked into it and found Robert had “an airtight alibi” (225) for the date of Karen’s disappearance. Stacy is relieved Karen is still alive. When she learns Karen is under arrest for the murder of Robert, she comments that Robert “had it coming” (226).
Chapter 37 Summary
The detectives learn that Robert Traynor found Karen by searching websites for bookkeeping firms until he found a picture of her with Tom Krupp at his firm’s holiday party. Detective Rasbach wonders why Robert tried so hard to find her. Detective Jennings tells Rasbach someone had called in a tip to say they should search the Krupp residence for the gun. They dismiss it because the story has been reported in the newspaper and they assume it’s a “crazy” person.
Tom goes to see Karen in jail. He tells her that Brigid told him she followed Karen the night of the murder. Karen wonders if Brigid is lying. Karen insists she is not capable of murder even if she still has no memory of what happened that night. Although he does not trust Brigid, Tom does not think Brigid is lying about what she saw.
Chapter 38 Summary
Tom is summoned to his office. His boss tells him that he is suspended without pay “until such time as the charges against your wife are dropped” (236).
Brigid gets a pixie haircut like Karen’s. She also gets a mani-pedi like Karen. She sees Tom return home. She “quivers with excitement” (238) at the prospect of taking over Karen’s role in Tom’s life.
Chapter 39 Summary
Detective Jennings tells Rasbach he got another call from the tipline. It is a woman asking why they have not yet searched the Krupp home for the missing gun. The detectives are intrigued because the caller asked about the gloves, a fact that has not been reported in the media. They wonder if the caller is a witness. They get a warrant to search the Krupp home.
That afternoon, Brigid goes over to the Krupp house to see Tom. He is “appalled” that she has changed her hair to look like Karen. She begins to flirt with him. When he tells her he is not interested because he is worried about Karen, Brigid responds that Karen “deserves what’s coming to her” (243). Brigid confesses her love for Tom. He is shocked at Brigid’s unhinged, manipulative behavior.
Chapters 31-39 Analysis
As mentioned in the Analysis of Chapters 10-21, A Stranger in the House plays on expectations of the domestic thriller genre to create false leads or red herrings, adding a new twist to The Impact of Secrets on Relationships, as even when Karen does appear to be revealing hidden truths about something, she is simply spinning another lie. This aspect of the narrative is particularly salient with regard to Karen’s claims of domestic abuse.
A Stranger in the House was published in 2017 at a time when there was a particular focus on domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and assault more broadly as part of the #MeToo movement. There was a shift in media portrayals and discourse around women who had experienced abuse. In earlier discourse, it was often misogynistically asserted that women who experienced abuse were often overstating the extent of their abuse. To combat this assertion, feminists argue that one should “believe women” when they describe their harassment or abuse instead of immediately dismissing or minimizing their claims. Within this social context, the characters of Tom and the detectives quickly believe Karen’s claims of abuse. Detective Rasbach even acknowledges that “if she was a battered wife, trying to escape an unbearable situation […] he’s sympathetic to her” (182).
Karen’s story is particularly believable because she went to such incredible lengths to create corroborating evidence by spending a year meeting with a counselor for abused women. She also adds convincing details in her conversations with Tom, such as the assertion that “for years, if I didn’t do something just right […] I’d get the living shit beat out of me” (185). The only person who could contradict her claims is now dead. Collectively, this all convincingly suggests that Karen was indeed abused by her husband and that her fear of him motivated her behavior. However, this story is a manipulative lie—it is revealed at the end of the novel that Robert Traynor was never abusive, just a petty criminal from whom she stole over $2 million.
Karen’s ironclad dedication to reinventing herself and assuming a new identity as a quiet suburban wife who has fled a bad first marriage is mirrored in Brigid’s similarly radical attempt at The Reinvention of Identity. Following Karen’s arrest, Brigid sees an opportunity to reinvent herself by taking over Karen’s identity and assuming Karen’s place at Tom’s side. She is rhapsodic about “ma[king] love in Karen and Tom’s bed. The same bed she and Tom used to make love in, before Karen moved in. That interloping bitch” (221). She seeks to reinforce her reinvented identity by copying Karen’s appearance. She gets “her hair cut short, in the same pixie style that Karen wears” (238) and gets her nails done like Karen.
Tom, however, is “appalled by [Brigid’s] appearance” (241). The use of “appalled” to describe his reaction is one way that the narrative presents Brigid’s attempts at reinvention as “off-putting” and “inappropriate.” However, Karen’s reinvention is arguably just as “inappropriate,” given the extent to which she lied about her experience of domestic abuse. The differing levels of narrative characterization about this theme is another way A Stranger in the House creates suspense and intrigue through mischaracterizations and misdirection. The narrative tries to lead the reader to suspect Brigid may have killed Robert Traynor to frame Karen, while subtly evading the idea that Karen may be lying about the nature of her marriage with Robert. Ultimately, both of these assumptions are undermined in the book’s conclusion.
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