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The Watcher in the Wall by Owen Laukkanen
Stevens & Windermere series Book #5
5★'s
From The Book:
Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens’s daughter, Andrea, is distraught over a classmate’s suicide, but what the two investigators find is even more disturbing—an online suicide club of unhappy teenagers, presided over by an anonymous presence who seems to be spurring them on. Soon, it becomes apparent that the classmate wasn’t the first victim—and won’t be the last, either, unless they can hunt down this psychopath once and for all.
My Thoughts:
It appears that there is someone encouraging teenagers on a suicide website to enter into a pack with the administrator of the site to not only kill themselves but are encouraged to film their death. This person leads them to believe that they are also suicidal and will die with them. Stevens and Windermere realize that there is a very sick and evil internet predator that is preying on susceptible youngsters and selling these recordings on the black websites.
A back story is taking place at the same time. A 15 year old boy is brutally abused by his alcoholic step-father. For some reason he feels that he has the right to prey on his step-sister and encourage her to kill herself. He has been watching her for several months and seeing her die is the high point of his life and he tries again and again to reach this high point again by watching others die.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the reader needs to be aware that it is a very, very dark topic. You will want so badly to tell the 16 year old girl that is on a bus from Tampa to Louisville to meet, what she believes is a 16 year old desperate boy named Brandon…to just turn around and run…DON”T get off the bus. Unfortunately the story has so much truth to it that it should scare every parent to watch what and who your child is meeting on line. Don’t be too busy or too trusting…they are children and don’t always have good judgment.
