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Dark Riddle
When a “good” child turns “bad,” who or what is to blame? After her son commits an atrocity, Gina Clayton will spend her life searching for the answer to this dark riddle.
296 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2020
2 people are currently reading
1363 people want to read
About the author
Deborah Madar
5 books44 followersI am a life-long avid reader, a retired English teacher (high school and college),wife, mother, grandmother, and a later-in- life published author. I never aspired to be a writer, but one summer day in 2013, inspiration came calling and nine months later (can't resist the metaphor!) Convergence was born! In May of 2020 NFB published my second novel, Dark Riddle. My third book, A Deeper Dive, Book #1 in the Merrill Connor Mystery series came out in May of 2023. Book #2 in the series, Boulder Point, will be available in June of 2024.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 6, 2020
I quickly read Deb’s book. this book is a real page turner. Her story touched so many issues we all grapple with every day. The facade people present is not always what we believe it to be. Hidden events and prejudice abound in this sharply written novel. We are forced to re-evaluate our own problem solving techniques and open ourselves to other perspectives. I found this, Deborah Madar’s second novel, challenging, exciting, thoughtful and genuine. I highly recommend Dark Riddle for any reader who enjoys a psychological puzzle with wonderful character study and community intrigue.
June 7, 2020
This book doesn’t just pull you in, it stays with you. I found myself reflecting on my own past actions/reactions as a mom and a teacher - concern, dismissal, compassion, prejudice, love, judgments, kindness. You won’t find a feel-good story that wraps up with a happy ending for all, but you will find a powerful, thought provoking, hard look at a subject in the news all too often after child goes “bad”. Dark Riddle by Debra Madar is definitely a Good Read!
May 6, 2020
I am in a generous mood tonight and I will give her 2 stars. I really believe she tried with this book. I think is she had more writing experience and a much better editor and a tighter store she might pop out a decent book. I did not care for any of the characters they were flat and cheesy dialogue at times. I liked the premise of the book but it just was not there. She tried to have different moments in time, and different pov which is old and you better very good to pull of but of those things in a book. I am not a big fan of different pov and time shifts all over the place do not work for me-I prefer a straight up story with less padding. I would say let her get more experience with a different book and skip the spin on this one.
April 27, 2020
Loved this! I read it in 3 days! Couldn’t even wait for my paper copy to arrive! Such a page turner!
May 30, 2020
Was excited to read another book by Madar and Dark Riddle didn’t disappoint. Loved how the story unfolded and it kept my interest from start to finish!
June 7, 2020
***NOVEL THOUGHTS***
4.5⭐s
Dark Riddle is a difficult subject but one unfortunately in the news far too often these days. Madar takes the tragedy of a school shooting and through her characters, tries to make sense of the senseless. The way she builds the story is also very poignant as Gina Clayton, the mother of the shooter, grapples with her guilt at not understanding why her son Luke would shoot 9 people, then turn the gun on himself. She feels as though she has missed something in the behavior of this child who has never given her a problem his whole life. She has always been able to count on his responsible nature and maturity even as her own life is a spiraling mess. As one of 5 children, he has stepped in as a nurturing presence after their father is sent to jail on drug charges and while his mother holds two jobs with late hours. How could he have done such a thing?
Madar's use of a school merger as what could be the motive for this act of violence is quite interesting. What was Jamesburg High School and Langston Schools is now Lake Hinon High and the allegiance by former students, now parents in some cases, to their "old" schools is a divisive line. Are these parents influencing their kids in their opinions about this merger, that one school was better than the other and now this mix of the two has somehow been polluted?
The police find a story in Luke's pocket, written by Adam Stoller, an author living in NYC who becomes so troubled by the fact that his work could be the reason for the killings, that he comes to the small upstate town to find out for himself why Luke carried these pages with him as he committed this most horrible act. In this way, Madar shows that often an outside source like lyrics, written works or movie characters are the unintended influences in the mind of a killer.
Even though Gina did not do the killings, the town treats her like a pariah, blaming her "wrong side of the tracks" lifestyle, lackadaisical parenting as the reason for Luke's rampage when nothing could be further from the truth. After all, his father is in jail, his twin brothers are always in trouble, his older sister, barely out of high school herself is pregnant. What else can you expect from a family of losers?? This judgmental reaction is the way the town tries to understand the tragedy and how they cope with their losses and their fear. By pointing a finger at the mother, they have something solid to blame for something that is just so horrible to comprehend.
This well-paced novel will be hard to put down. The characters are believable and relatable. Madar makes the reader think about what must go through the mind of a young person who commits this kind of crime and its contributing factors as well as the aftermath of the families impacted. She looks at the effect of bullying, prejudice, rationalization, the breakdown of a system that should be there for young people in time of need, the mind numbing guilt that will never go away, mob-mentality, and the tremendous impact of social media on the young mind.
In the closing chapter as Gina becomes a speaker about her son's actions, she talks about why her kid? There are plenty of kids who are bullied but do not go to school and shoot up a room full of people. Why do some kids act out this way? It is a good question. Hopefully, this book will start an ongoing discussion to find out and to prevent this kind of violence from every occurring again.
4.5⭐s
Dark Riddle is a difficult subject but one unfortunately in the news far too often these days. Madar takes the tragedy of a school shooting and through her characters, tries to make sense of the senseless. The way she builds the story is also very poignant as Gina Clayton, the mother of the shooter, grapples with her guilt at not understanding why her son Luke would shoot 9 people, then turn the gun on himself. She feels as though she has missed something in the behavior of this child who has never given her a problem his whole life. She has always been able to count on his responsible nature and maturity even as her own life is a spiraling mess. As one of 5 children, he has stepped in as a nurturing presence after their father is sent to jail on drug charges and while his mother holds two jobs with late hours. How could he have done such a thing?
Madar's use of a school merger as what could be the motive for this act of violence is quite interesting. What was Jamesburg High School and Langston Schools is now Lake Hinon High and the allegiance by former students, now parents in some cases, to their "old" schools is a divisive line. Are these parents influencing their kids in their opinions about this merger, that one school was better than the other and now this mix of the two has somehow been polluted?
The police find a story in Luke's pocket, written by Adam Stoller, an author living in NYC who becomes so troubled by the fact that his work could be the reason for the killings, that he comes to the small upstate town to find out for himself why Luke carried these pages with him as he committed this most horrible act. In this way, Madar shows that often an outside source like lyrics, written works or movie characters are the unintended influences in the mind of a killer.
Even though Gina did not do the killings, the town treats her like a pariah, blaming her "wrong side of the tracks" lifestyle, lackadaisical parenting as the reason for Luke's rampage when nothing could be further from the truth. After all, his father is in jail, his twin brothers are always in trouble, his older sister, barely out of high school herself is pregnant. What else can you expect from a family of losers?? This judgmental reaction is the way the town tries to understand the tragedy and how they cope with their losses and their fear. By pointing a finger at the mother, they have something solid to blame for something that is just so horrible to comprehend.
This well-paced novel will be hard to put down. The characters are believable and relatable. Madar makes the reader think about what must go through the mind of a young person who commits this kind of crime and its contributing factors as well as the aftermath of the families impacted. She looks at the effect of bullying, prejudice, rationalization, the breakdown of a system that should be there for young people in time of need, the mind numbing guilt that will never go away, mob-mentality, and the tremendous impact of social media on the young mind.
In the closing chapter as Gina becomes a speaker about her son's actions, she talks about why her kid? There are plenty of kids who are bullied but do not go to school and shoot up a room full of people. Why do some kids act out this way? It is a good question. Hopefully, this book will start an ongoing discussion to find out and to prevent this kind of violence from every occurring again.
June 4, 2020
Beautifully written story of an unimaginable tragedy.
Dark Riddle demonstrates how a consistent plot, research and style separate good writers from great ones. The story unfolds
on the last day of a seemingly normal teen’s life and follows through the devastation he unleashed on a small town.
Dark Riddle demonstrates how a consistent plot, research and style separate good writers from great ones. The story unfolds
on the last day of a seemingly normal teen’s life and follows through the devastation he unleashed on a small town.
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June 1, 2020Adam Stoller, a character in Deborah Madar’s new book called Dark Riddle ponders the idea, “What is writing if not the search for truth.” I’d go further and ask whose truth do we choose to hear. Blogs, self-publishing, the comment sections of articles all allow multiple voices to be heard. It’s easy to find a Greek chorus to tell us what we want to believe. It’s not difficult to come across a feel good story, but life is not a Facebook meme and sometimes there is no sense to be made from other people’s actions or the choices they make.
We’re told early on in the book that there is some mental illness in Gina Clayton’s family. Was there a biological reason for her son’s actions? I’d venture she would gladly cut off her ear, or her hair, or limb for that matter if she could just stop for one minute, any minute before 11/23, but as a working mother she doesn’t have the luxury. In the small town where she and her children live, Gina is given little comfort either before or after the infamous day. A point could be made that the character did have love and support from her parents and if she had accepted it earlier, maybe things would have been all right. As a reader, I didn’t fully understand her unwillingness, but as a fan of Gilmore Girls, I was willing to go along with the idea that the price to her pride would have been too much for her to bear.
The thing is, if I didn’t understand it, I doubt her children did either. Gina had been an only child who didn’t have competition for her parent’s attention or resources. Her children knew this and may have seen a strong woman wanting to prove herself, but at what cost? Gina’s eldest daughter is now pregnant and Gina is allowing her to stay. While I was reading, I had the impression Gina was giving her daughter the same disappointed look her parents gave her when she married the wrong guy. I wondered how that played out in Gina’s son’s head. Did that have an impact, too? We’ll never know. No note was left behind, but there was a story.
Enter Adam Stoller. He’s a successful author who has his own questions about the school shooting. He struggles to understand how a story he wrote inspired an unbelievable tragedy and seems unable to write again until he has figured it out. Arriving at the small community, most people clam up in the presence of the self-appointed swaggering bullies who believe their opinion is the only one that matters. So much of their thoughts are on the school merger which they didn’t want, and it becomes an easy target for them to blame. If only the two towns had remained separate, this never would have happened, they believe. Madar captures the reality I’ve witnesses in multiple community forums - how small minds have the simplest concrete thoughts and yell the loudest.
But in this novel, the quiet voices reach out, wanting to be heard. Finding them is made tricky, but they are key in developing a better understanding of the dynamics of the community and the preceding events leading up to that fateful day.
None of the events or life circumstances tells a reader why the boy did it and in that sense, the book is brilliantly on point. We can all sit back and think about how it could have gone down differently. We can come up with silly sayings like “Be Best” to combat bullying which doesn’t carry any more weight than the “Just Say No” program did to prevent people from taking drugs. We can scream about getting kids away from screens, but I grew up playing in the fresh air before cell phones were as prolific as they are today and I still met up with mean girls. Listening is what we all need to do better, yes, to the kids, but also to each other.
For me, reading a book about the parent of a school shooter offered me a chance to analyze a situation I’d never considered thinking about before. We can never know how it really is for another person, but we need to take baby steps once in a while and try to see things from another perspective. Instead of reading the same old narrative, we need to cruise a different lane in the library, check out a biography about people we don’t agree with or read a romance and a western in order to find out what else is being written, find out what other tales are being told. Deborah Madar’s Dark Riddle is a thought provoking place to start.
We’re told early on in the book that there is some mental illness in Gina Clayton’s family. Was there a biological reason for her son’s actions? I’d venture she would gladly cut off her ear, or her hair, or limb for that matter if she could just stop for one minute, any minute before 11/23, but as a working mother she doesn’t have the luxury. In the small town where she and her children live, Gina is given little comfort either before or after the infamous day. A point could be made that the character did have love and support from her parents and if she had accepted it earlier, maybe things would have been all right. As a reader, I didn’t fully understand her unwillingness, but as a fan of Gilmore Girls, I was willing to go along with the idea that the price to her pride would have been too much for her to bear.
The thing is, if I didn’t understand it, I doubt her children did either. Gina had been an only child who didn’t have competition for her parent’s attention or resources. Her children knew this and may have seen a strong woman wanting to prove herself, but at what cost? Gina’s eldest daughter is now pregnant and Gina is allowing her to stay. While I was reading, I had the impression Gina was giving her daughter the same disappointed look her parents gave her when she married the wrong guy. I wondered how that played out in Gina’s son’s head. Did that have an impact, too? We’ll never know. No note was left behind, but there was a story.
Enter Adam Stoller. He’s a successful author who has his own questions about the school shooting. He struggles to understand how a story he wrote inspired an unbelievable tragedy and seems unable to write again until he has figured it out. Arriving at the small community, most people clam up in the presence of the self-appointed swaggering bullies who believe their opinion is the only one that matters. So much of their thoughts are on the school merger which they didn’t want, and it becomes an easy target for them to blame. If only the two towns had remained separate, this never would have happened, they believe. Madar captures the reality I’ve witnesses in multiple community forums - how small minds have the simplest concrete thoughts and yell the loudest.
But in this novel, the quiet voices reach out, wanting to be heard. Finding them is made tricky, but they are key in developing a better understanding of the dynamics of the community and the preceding events leading up to that fateful day.
None of the events or life circumstances tells a reader why the boy did it and in that sense, the book is brilliantly on point. We can all sit back and think about how it could have gone down differently. We can come up with silly sayings like “Be Best” to combat bullying which doesn’t carry any more weight than the “Just Say No” program did to prevent people from taking drugs. We can scream about getting kids away from screens, but I grew up playing in the fresh air before cell phones were as prolific as they are today and I still met up with mean girls. Listening is what we all need to do better, yes, to the kids, but also to each other.
For me, reading a book about the parent of a school shooter offered me a chance to analyze a situation I’d never considered thinking about before. We can never know how it really is for another person, but we need to take baby steps once in a while and try to see things from another perspective. Instead of reading the same old narrative, we need to cruise a different lane in the library, check out a biography about people we don’t agree with or read a romance and a western in order to find out what else is being written, find out what other tales are being told. Deborah Madar’s Dark Riddle is a thought provoking place to start.
June 27, 2020
This one really drew me in. I’ve reflected on it even after the fact as the craziness of our “new normal” challenges us all to know if any family member, friend or acquaintance - and even I- are who I think we are. Deborah takes apart the pieces of an interesting and contemporary puzzle and constructs a believable story with real characters, complete with flaws and complexities. I’ve recommended to friends and will watch this author.
June 19, 2020
This book grasped me from the start and made my eye wet at the ending. Grab this book and read it! If you’re a parent, read it. If you’re a high school student read it. Know you’re not alone. Know that we’re not perfect. But most of all, know that sometimes someone else needs you.
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July 22, 2020I couldn’t put Dark Riddle down and read it in two days! I was touched by the way it is written from the mother’s perspective and shows the effect of a tragedy on all the families involved. By the end of the book I felt like I knew Gina and could feel her pain. This is a must read!
May 30, 2020
What a good book! It grabbed you right away to the point you didn’t want to put it down. A school shooting is a tragedy for the victims and families but what about the shooters family? Sympathetic characters and lots of questions to why it happened keeps you turning the page.
October 21, 2020
I finished this book some time ago, and I still think about it quite often. The plot itself is rather simple: a school shooting—something we read about in the news every day. However, the book and its characters are anything but simple. The “dark riddle” of why the shooter would do something so horrific hangs in the air throughout. There are many other riddles in the book, though, surrounding the other characters’ actions and motivations. This is where I believe the author really draws you in, all the way to the end. There are so many characters acting out their own egotism, ignorance, intolerance, fear (on one hand), courage, love, loyalty (on the other)—just to name a few. I find myself wondering why the other characters performed their deeds: the football players (sure) but also the principal, the author, the grandparents, the father, etc. These characters’ behavior did not always make sense to me, in a very “true to life” sense. I don’t always understand other people’s actions in the real world, either. Just as there was a “back story” on the shooter, I imagine a story behind all of the characters. Stories that we’ll never know (but it’s still fun to speculate). And in that sense, the book reminds me that we don’t know the “back story” underneath many people we encounter. Maybe it’s worth finding out; maybe it’s not. But in this world (I think) we’re better off to acknowledge the complexity behind other people’s actions (evil or not), and admit that maybe there is more than meets the eye. I liked the book very much.
September 20, 2020
Great writing that shows to consider the complication of every story. Not an easy read, but a novel that captures the emotional response to tragedy.
March 16, 2021
This was a very sad story that ended on a note of hope. Obviously, it was written in the pre-COVID days. On one hand, I read news reports that many teenagers committed suicide while schools were closed because being in school gave them a purpose and a support network. On the other hand, there had been no school shootings during school closures. That has to be a good thing too. I wonder if ultimately Gina and Adam will fall in love. I would like to see Adam's character appear in a future novel by the author. The one thing that detracted from this book being perfect was there were quite a few typos and misspellings in it. It reminded me of many self-published books that had no professional editors.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews