*Spoilers below*
Ultimately, this book did what it set out to do, which was to determine the extent of a parent's culpability for a child's reprehensible action. In this case, the action was the assassination of a political figure. A child acts alone, but who that child becomes is heavily influenced by the parent and that affects the child's decision-making.
Hawley did an incredible job getting into the head of Dr. Allen; I felt as if I was there with him, desperately clinging to any semblance of a mistake, a conspiracy, a set-up. A few times I thought certainly Danny was innocent. After all, he was a good kid and the coincidences couldn't just be coincidences, could they? However, as the novel progressed, Danny's guilt became certain and I found myself frustrated with the main character, wishing he'd just accept things and move on. Then, I put myself in his place and realized that if it was one of my children in Danny's place, I simply wouldn't give up.
The part describing what would happen during Danny's execution tore me apart; Hawley put words to my feelings. How could a parent stay still while life was being drained from a child? How could a pause last forever? How could you watch someone die whom you'd watched being born? The author made me, oddly, feel more for the killer's family than for the victim's.
Perhaps part of that is the lack of personal literary contact with the victim's family. Perhaps the other part is that I didn't find Seagram as dynamic or interesting as the author told us. None of the speeches Seagram gave electrified me or made me tingle like seemingly everyone else in the book. I thought his speeches were a collection of trite and overused "buzz phrases" that anyone with a brain could see through. Seagram was inflated rhetoric, a perfect politician.
Hawley's included research of assassins' and killers' stories impressed me. I learned details about Squeaky Fromme, John Hinckley, Timothy McVeigh, and Sirhan Sirhan I didn't previously know. These informative details cleverly reappeared in the final chapter in Danny's head. The chapter read like a movie, every detail already eerie because the reader knows what's going to happen.
In all, entertaining, informative, interesting, and unlike other books I've read.
Ultimately, this book did what it set out to do, which was to determine the extent of a parent's culpability for a child's reprehensible action. In this case, the action was the assassination of a political figure. A child acts alone, but who that child becomes is heavily influenced by the parent and that affects the child's decision-making.
Hawley did an incredible job getting into the head of Dr. Allen; I felt as if I was there with him, desperately clinging to any semblance of a mistake, a conspiracy, a set-up. A few times I thought certainly Danny was innocent. After all, he was a good kid and the coincidences couldn't just be coincidences, could they? However, as the novel progressed, Danny's guilt became certain and I found myself frustrated with the main character, wishing he'd just accept things and move on. Then, I put myself in his place and realized that if it was one of my children in Danny's place, I simply wouldn't give up.
The part describing what would happen during Danny's execution tore me apart; Hawley put words to my feelings. How could a parent stay still while life was being drained from a child? How could a pause last forever? How could you watch someone die whom you'd watched being born? The author made me, oddly, feel more for the killer's family than for the victim's.
Perhaps part of that is the lack of personal literary contact with the victim's family. Perhaps the other part is that I didn't find Seagram as dynamic or interesting as the author told us. None of the speeches Seagram gave electrified me or made me tingle like seemingly everyone else in the book. I thought his speeches were a collection of trite and overused "buzz phrases" that anyone with a brain could see through. Seagram was inflated rhetoric, a perfect politician.
Hawley's included research of assassins' and killers' stories impressed me. I learned details about Squeaky Fromme, John Hinckley, Timothy McVeigh, and Sirhan Sirhan I didn't previously know. These informative details cleverly reappeared in the final chapter in Danny's head. The chapter read like a movie, every detail already eerie because the reader knows what's going to happen.
In all, entertaining, informative, interesting, and unlike other books I've read.
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