The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 August 2015
by Steve Hamilton
Narrating this story from a prison cell, ten years into his sentence, Mike starts this novel by reminding us that we might remember The Miracle Boy, a child who survived an indescribable horror and who fell mute for years. Indeed, it is nineteen years later, and Mike is still silent. But he wants to tell us his story, how he ended up in jail, and the tumble of almost uncontrollable events that colored his life. So, we flash back, to two closely related periods of Mike's youth. First, he is seventeen, a high school junior with a talent for drawing and for picking locks. It is the latter that lands him in trouble after a high school prank gone awry. Mike earns probation that leads him into the control of shady characters, and into the romantic thrall of young Amelia. The second period is nearly a year later, and Mike has participated in several safe-cracking break-ins. He wants to escape the life of crime he has fallen into, but fears for Amelia's safety. In his silence, he is utterly reliable as a criminal conspirator. But his talent with locks makes him indespensible. It looks as though this could go on forever. But we know Mike ends up in jail, hoping that he'll soon be released after serving his minimum sentence. What keeps the reader engaged, though, are the vivid and brutal episodes of breaking, entering, and safe-cracking. But, also, the reader longs to know what was the original tragedy that silenced young Mike, and how that history relates to his obsession with locks. Eventually, we see that Mike is trying to bust the combination of his own lock, the thing that makes him unable to speak. Even the love of Amelia, with whom he exchanges a correspondence in drawings, is not quite able to break the code. This book was noted for its crossover popularity between adult and young-adult readers. One can see the appeal to a teenaged audience, as Mike is seventeen throughout most of the novel, romantic, strong and silent, faithful, and a broken young man appealing to a girl's inclination to save him from his history. Something is missing, though, in Mike's story. The trauma that has lingered with him doesn't seem to hang on him so heavily. Though he is unable to speak, he is otherwise untroubled by the complex sequence of events that have followed him throughout his life. Perhaps it is too much to ask of this crime novel to explore the paths between childhood trauma and adulthood criminal behavior. But Mike is not depressed or angry. If anything, he seems, like many seventeen-year-olds, just willing to go along with the flow of things, to let things happen to him. Everything from his soft-focus romance to the brutality of murder.
(For this book, Hamilton was awarded the 2011 Edgar award for best novel.)