Have you ever wondered how you'd react if you found out that one of your children had committed a most heinous crime? Would you proclaim their innocence, even in the face of the most damning evidence?
Dr Paul Allen is a respected rheumatologist at a hospital in Manhattan. He is married with 2 small boys, and an older son by a previous marriage. Daniel appears to be an average American boy, shuffling between his mother, on the west coast of the USA and his father on the east. He shows no signs of being adversely affected by his parent's divorce, or his mother's flakiness. But then he drops out of college for a year and, effectively, disappears.
His travels and experiences are reconstructed later, by his father and lawyer, and by the police and CIA. Because Daniel turns up at a political rally, a year after leaving college, an shoots dead a prmoising candidate for the American Presidency.
Dr Allen is distraught and, as his life spirals out of control and at the risk of losing his family, becomes obsessed with proving that Daniel is innocent. But is he? He is seen, on film, in the auditorium, with a gun in his hand and he refuses to proclaim his innocence. Putting together Daniel's journey across the country, between college and the killing, Dr Allen begins to see that Daniel has a troubled soul and is not the son he thought he was. But what is he?
Not so much a thriller, but more of a mystery novel, this story is a wonderful exercise in examining some of the worst dilemma's of modern parenthood. Can we ever know our children as we would wish too? Compassionate, heartbreaking, emotional, this book deserves to be read with close attention and an open mind. Recommended.
The Good Father is published by Hodder and Stoughton, ISBN978-1-444-73039-5 and 6
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