With an abundance of compassion and clinical detail, [Hunter, in "Strangers When We Meet",]… has traced a year of tragic adultery by Larry Cole, thirty-one, free-lance architect, and Maggie Gault, twenty-seven, free-lance housewife….

Doggedly realistic most of the way, Hunter gives the whole book an oddly moralistic tone by plunging into a cloudy compound of philosophy and symbolism for his climactic sequence. Finally forced to decide between Maggie and his wife, Larry drives wildly through a shrieking tropical storm lashing New York. He broods on the meaning of his moments with Maggie. Was sex just "a sure thing in a world of uncertainties, an accomplishment in the world of unrealized dreams and frustrated goals?" Or was this affair an escape into a glamorous adolescent concept of romance?

This is the man's story, Larry's story. It is his undoing, his tragedy in his first and last experiment in infidelity...