The Reunion Bomber by Bill Flynn
What's It About?
It’s not uncommon for elementary school children, in their early struggles to find their identities, to accentuate — and compare themselves to — the weaknesses of others.That lack of tolerance and sympathy for another child’s problems has huge consequences in Bill Flynn’s harrowing novel The Reunion Bomber (Gatekeeper Press). Apparently, the seventh-grade class at Meyer Elementary School picked the wrong boy to bully and make fun of. Lyle Emery grows up feeling the full effects of that abuse and lives a troubled life — so troubled that when he gets out of prison, he sets in motion a gruesome plan to exact revenge.
“Above his workbench,” writes Flynn, “attached to the wall with masking tape, is an enlargement of the 1993 seventh-grade group picture. Lyle stares at the 38 faces until his gaze focuses on one. He puts a check beside the 12-year-old class president, then the VP, Secretary and Treasurer. ‘They w-will d-die f-first.’”
Lyle concocts an elaborate reign of terror with the focal point a mass bombing at the class reunion at a restaurant in Eastboro, MA. His scheme and his misguided intelligence is a personal statement to his former classmates that he is a person to be reckoned with.
FORMER FBI AGENT CLASSMATE MUST RESCUE HIS PEERS
The protagonist, Ronan Ryan, one of the class sports stars and a former FBI agent who has taken his lumps in life, is excited and nostalgic about coming back to his old stomping grounds and hoping for the possibility that his former flame Jennifer Allen Parker will be in attendance.
Not only is Jennifer there, but she is one of the primary targets of Lyle’s onslaught. When the bombs explode, Ryan, reverting to his old FBI mode, takes the lead in helping his former classmates to safety and solving the crime.
This is one of those narratives that tells readers the killer from the outset. The adventure is in watching the authorities put the pieces together to identify him and attempt to track him down.
While Flynn does not hammer any messages over readers’ heads, he introduces some important social issues such as bullying, child abuse, abandonment, speech impediments, mental illness, and the concept of young children starting to explore exactly who they are.
AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT A KILLER AND HIS MASTER PLAN
The characters do a lot of reminiscing about the days of their youth, the situations that were touching and made them laugh, and the joys of growing up in a seemingly tightly knit community. Until, of course, the tenor of the story changes.
The most in-depth character in the tale is Lyle, who blames the effects of the way he was treated in his early days on all the misfortune that follows him later in life. Although some of the characters lament over their insensitive treatment of Lyle and others like him during their school days, it’s amazing that, so many years later, he hasn’t forgotten and makes it his life’s work to get his revenge and find his errant justice. The author takes advantage of his background as a retired aerospace engineer to introduce technology that Lyle employs as he carefully plots his every move.
In The Reunion Bomber, Bill Flynn weaves together a fast-paced story, subtly blending in important themes that are sure to attract many diverse readers.
