The Watcher in the Wall

January 18, 2016
A teen’s suicide kick-starts Laukkanen’s subpar fifth novel featuring Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Kirk Stevens and his FBI partner, Carla Windermere (after 2015’s The Stolen Ones). Stevens’s daughter, a high school senior, is distraught after a bullied classmate, Adrian Miller, hangs himself in his bedroom one day after school. When Stevens and Windermere learn that Adrian entered a suicide pact with someone with whom he was in contact online, they begin a desperate search to save the life of his partner. The pair later discover that the online contact persuaded Adrian to film his own death, encouraged others to kill themselves, and may have future victims lined up. The revelation of their adversary’s identity, a sadistic voyeur with the requisite troubled upbringing, sets up a tense cat and mouse game. Windermere, who takes on the one-dimensional villain with what amounts to a personal vendetta, engages in some unlikely heroics at the climax. Author tour. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Starred review from January 15, 2016
A fast-paced thriller in which Windermere and Stevens (The Stolen Ones, 2015, etc.) must stop the Internet predator who's persuading teens to commit suicide. FBI agent Carla Windermere partners again with Special Agent Kirk Stevens of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Adrian Miller, a high school classmate of Stevens' daughter, commits suicide, and soon both agents are searching for possible connections with other suicides. Someone is putting the kids up to it, and readers soon see who. "It started with the hole in the wall" for 15-year-old Randall Gruber, who spied on his stepsister, Sarah, in their double-wide trailer and "resented that she was so happy." Stepdad Earl terrorized Randall, who found a way to secretly goad Sarah into committing suicide, which he watched with great pleasure through the hole. Meanwhile, the agents discover that someone is targeting alienated teenagers on the online Death Wish forum and grooming them for self-destruction. He tells them that he's fed up with life, too, and says they should kill themselves together. But first he has to watch them do it, via a webcam: "I need to watch you or I won't have the guts to do it myself." It's Gruber, of course, though the agents don't know it yet; after the kids commit suicide, he sells the videos. Windermere and Stevens set up a fake profile to lure the predator and rescue the teens. They're relentless, especially Windermere, who barely contains her fury. She even browbeats a judge into admitting the issue is criminal activity and not free speech. And when Gruber thinks he has the best of Windermere, she keeps coming at him--"The bitch just wouldn't take a hint." No indeed, and that's why her colleagues call her Supercop and why she's such a wonderful series character. Either she or the perp is going down, and it damned well won't be her. She's African-American, by the way, but that factors little into the series so far. A gut-wrenching tale filled with empathy for alienated teens. This may be the best yet in a first-rate series.

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December 1, 2015
Crime-fighting duo FBI agent Carla Windermere and Minnesota BCA agent Kirk Stevens (The Stolen Ones, 2015) are drawn into the hunt for an online predator when questions arise about the suicide of a classmate of Stevens' daughter, Andrea. After promising Andrea they'd poke around, Windermere and Stevensfind that the troubled teen forged a suicide pact with a girl she met on an online suicide site. FBI tech experts determine that the girl's heavily cloaked identity is a cover for a predator who has lured other teens to their deaths. Chat logs reveal that their predator has two other victims lined up, and the hunt for a cunning killer becomes a desperate bid to save a young girl's life. Suspension of disbelief is required as Windermere and Stevens' boss authorizes an arsenal of resources for a case he declares isn't under FBI or BCA jurisdiction, but Laukkanen skillfully distracts from this pesky detail with earnest characterization and incomparable pacing. This is a guaranteed lost weekend for Laukkanen's fans and for anyone those seeking a Lee Childlike adrenaline rush.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2015

First seen in the multi-award-nominated The Professionals, Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint Bureau of Criminal Apprehension-Federal Bureau of Investigation violent crime task force return to probe the suicide of a classmate of Kirk's daughter. Unsettlingly, they discover an online suicide club of troubled teens pushed closer to the edge by an anonymous ringleader. What's more unsettling: the book is based on true events.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.