FINDING JAKE

Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon is a suspense-laden and emotion-filled novel that is every parents' worst nightmare: a shooting at your child's school. What makes the story so compelling are several unanswered questions: the fate of a missing student, his involvement (if any) in the shooting and how well do parents really know their children. There are several other fascinating elements to the storyline that are also quite thought-provoking but discovering the answers to these three questions is what I found most riveting.

Simon Connolly is a stay at home dad who has always worried about his two kids, Jake and Laney. He agonizes over the smallest details of his parenting but in the aftermath of the school shooting, he cannot help but obsess over whether he made the right decisions for both kids, but Jake in particular. When the parents of the students begin to learn the fate of their children, Simon is the last parent to receive information about Jake, but he is left reeling at the news that Jake is a suspect in the shooting and that he is, in fact, missing. His son's connection to the troubled suspect is tenuous but police immediately focus on Jake as a co-conspirator and Simon is left wondering if he overlooked signs that Jake is capable of committing such a heinous act of violence.

Simon is panicked from the first notification that there is trouble at the school and he remains that way for much of the novel. He flashes back to different moments in Jake's childhood and the picture of a quiet, shy, introverted child quickly emerges. Simon wonders if he imparted the right lessons to his son and if he made the right choices during pivotal moments of Jake's childhood. While Simon's wife and daughter never doubt Jake's innocence, Simon is plagued with misgivings and uncertainties that cloud his judgment in several instances. In a moment of startling clarity, Simon finally puts the pieces of the puzzle together and he is nearly shattered by his subsequent discovery.

School shootings are particularly horrifying crimes and it is easy to make snap judgments and leap to conclusions in an effort to understand the incomprehensible. Friends and neighbors are the first to point fingers and distance themselves from the alleged perpetrators. There is intense pressure on law enforcement to provide answers and reassure the public that they have solved the crime. Parents are easy to blame when their child misbehaves and in a school shooting, it becomes imperative to assign responsibility and parents are often burdened with guilt and their decisions are closely scrutinized. Each of these topics are realistically explored in Finding Jake and the reactions of the various characters ring true.

Crime / Drama / Ficção / Suspense e Mistério