{"id":1934,"date":"2016-04-22T14:50:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T21:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2016-04-22T14:50:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T21:50:20","slug":"owen-laukkanen-the-watcher-in-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/owen-laukkanen-the-watcher-in-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Owen Laukkanen: The Watcher in the Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9780399174544\"This is the first one of Laukkanen\u2019s books I\u2019ve read \u2013 the subject interested me \u2013 and now I know what to say when someone has read every Harlan Coben title. Give Owen Laukkanen a try. This is a thriller with a heart and<\/em> a brain, a difficult combination to resist. Laukkanen\u2019s series characters are Minneapolis FBI agents Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere, and Stevens is caught off guard early on when one of his daughter\u2019s classmates commits suicide.<\/p>\n

Windemere has her own issues with a classmate\u2019s suicide many years ago and she takes a personal interest in this young man\u2019s death, which, upon examination, appears to have been encouraged by someone else. While the FBI agents are on a tech trail trying to figure out what happened and find the instigator, the parallel story shows the reader just what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

Laukkanen takes us back in time to when nerdy Randy Gruber has been taken by his mother to live in a doublewide owned by a violent, abusive man who regularly beats Randy up. His only solace is watching his new stepsister through a hole in his bedroom wall, and later, systematically destroying her life.<\/p>\n

Gruber\u2019s adult pattern of encouraging teens to kill themselves is laid down there, but the author\u2019s concern is also with those who feel alienated, depressed \u2013 suicidal \u2013 and seem to have nowhere to turn to figure things out. He\u2019s firmly on the heartbreaking side of the outsider.<\/p>\n

As this tightly coiled plot unspools, with a do or die situation at the end that\u2019s almost hard to read (even though I was pretty sure it would be OK), you won\u2019t be able to stop reading or when finished, to stop thinking about the kids (and adults) in this novel. Laukkanen has an end note about his own struggle with depression, asking anyone who feels they need a hand to reach out. It gave the whole book more resonance as far as I was concerned. Aside from that this is a simply terrific thriller by a smart writer who creates characters you care about and remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first one of Laukkanen\u2019s books I\u2019ve read \u2013 the subject interested me \u2013 and now I know what to say when someone has read every Harlan Coben title. Give Owen Laukkanen a try. This is a thriller with a heart and a brain, a difficult combination to resist. Laukkanen\u2019s series characters are … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}