The Knife That Killed Me

McGowan's third novel is a dramatic page-turner and gripping meditation on power and violence. Narrating from “a gray place,” teenager Paul Vardeman takes readers back to his rigid Catholic high school, where the teachers can be as cruel as the students (“It was a place where you always felt like there was a belt around your chest, tightening, squeezing, and another weight on your head, keeping you bowed down, eyes to the ground”). When a manipulative bully forces Paul to deliver a gruesome package to a rival school's gang leader, it reignites longstanding hostilities, which rapidly escalate. Insecure and conflicted, Paul is pushed further down a dark road, which McGowan (Jack Tumor ) counterbalances with Paul's growing friendship with a group of outsider students, “the freaks,” including his crush. A sense of dread never really dissipates as the story hurtles toward an epic, primal battle, but McGowan has twists in store, making the final scenes as surprising as they are inevitable. The language often borders on mythic, giving the novel an unsettling, ancient quality, not unlike that of violence itself. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)