What Boys Learn by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Andromeda Romano-Lax once again holds her reading audience in the palm of her hand with her latest engrossing psychological thriller What Boys Learn. It both enthralls and terrifies with the frightening possibilities of mind manipulation by an expert who subtly controls his vulnerable subjects mesmerizing them to commit unconscionably heinous crimes. Her previous novel The Deepest Lake enthralled readers with a complex mother/daughter suspenseful drama that takes place at a writing retreat in a remote village in Guatemala. In What Boys Learn, high school guidance counselor Abby Rosso confronts the possibility that her only child, beloved son Benjamin, may have some involvement in the death of two teenage girls from prestigious Summit High School in a wealthy Chicago suburb.
Childhood Shadows and Family Trauma
Abby was eight years old when her carefree childhood ended following the death of her mother from a stroke. Psychological abuse at the hands of her older brother Ewan increased and was exacerbated by stepmonster Martha who secretly tormented her out of earshot or view of her husband. Martha drank heavily and obsessively cleaned house, often late at night, dying after slipping on the kitchen floor and striking her head on a marble countertop on her way down. Abby was nearly fourteen and placed in foster care until her eighteenth birthday. Barely eighteen Ewan was soon incarcerated, remorseless, for a violent crime he committed. A year after Martha’s death, their father would be in full-time care for early-onset dementia.
Two decades passed, single mom Abby had Benjamin at twenty, worked odd jobs until age twenty-seven, then took on heavy debt to finance her college education earning a Bachelor’s Degree followed by a Master’s Degree in Counseling and Psychology. Although her job at Summit High School paid their monthly bills with the additional benefit of providing free tuition for Benjamin, it didn’t provide for many extras. He did well in school, but was an outsider among the rich kids who travelled extensively, wore designer clothes and drove vehicles that cost more than his mom’s annual salary. Barely 14, he has not yet attained a growth spurt and girls his age tower over him. Benjamin’s passion for swimming provides his greatest pleasure. Abby’s worst fear is her beloved child who has always been remote and seems to lack empathy may share a genetic propensity towards psychopathy with his Uncle Ewan. Beginning with stints in a juvenile detention center, Ewan had progressed to ever more violent behaviors. As a result of these aggressive and increasingly savage outbursts, Ewan’s original short jail sentence was continually extended. He engaged in prison fights, broke a guard’s rib, gave another a concussion, and brutally attacked the prison dentist as he was providing care.
Ewan had been formally diagnosed as a psychopath, defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: “A mentally unstable person especially: a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies.”
This fit Ewan to a proverbial “T”. He had been an ever present danger to his sister whom he once attempted to trade to a fellow hoodlum for a discount price on a car he wished to buy and remained demanding, narcissistic and self-centered. Abby had moved several times but he had managed to find her address again and was attempting to contact Benjamin.
A Mother’s Desperate Investigation
Following the deaths of teenage schoolgirls Sidney and Isabel, whose murders may be linked, Abby is placed on temporary suspension as a result of her contact with the girls outside of their school counseling sessions. While she is waiting for a summer school temporary position to begin at another private high school, she begins her own investigation of the crimes. Her ex-boyfriend, ex-cop Robert provides some assistance with his access to police records. One discovery revealed that the juvenile detention center where Ewan had been housed as a teen-ager had eliminated group counseling sessions when it became clear the boys sharing of their illegal activities was serving as training for them to facilitate their criminal careers upon release. This raises the possibility that What Boys Learn at this juvenile “correction” facility, through a combination of negative Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), behavior modification and hypnotic suggestions is a “how-to” manual to commit crimes and get away with them. Someone nefarious could be well influence boys and young men to become adept at eluding capture. The increase in serial killers committing sexual assaults before murdering their young victims in the Chicago area suggests that while far-fetched, her instincts might prove true.
Seasoned, best-selling novelist and former travel writer Andromeda Romano-Lax has written a compulsively readable thriller in What Boys Learn layering discussions of mental health as related to criminal behavior with unexpected plot twists. It may keep you up at night double-checking door and window locks and investigating random noises!
About Andromeda Romano-Lax:
Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of six novels translated into eleven languages, including The Spanish Bow, a New York Times Editors’ Choice; Annie and the Wolves, selected by Booklist as a Top Ten Historical Novel of the Year; and The Deepest Lake, a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick. Her novels reflect her interest in topics as varied as art acquisition during the Nazi era (The Detour), psychological scandals of the 1920s (Behave), and artificial intelligence and the future of eldercare (Plum Rains). Born in Chicago, she lived in Alaska (where she co-founded 49 Writers), Taiwan, and Mexico before settling on a small island in British Columbia, Canada.
