The good father

 by Noah Hawley.  Paul Allen, a successful Manhattan rheumatologist and the father of twin boys with his second wife, is completely stunned when two Secret Service agents show up at his front door. They inform him that his son by his first marriage, 20-year-old Daniel Allen, aka Carter Allen Cash, has killed a rising political star and presidential candidate. Suddenly, Paul's life as he knew it is over. Resistant to the idea that his son is the actual assassin, he is taken aback when Daniel pleads guilty. He then becomes obsessed with finding out how his son, once such a curious and gentle child, could commit such a barbaric act. Combing Daniel's childhood for clues to the one parental misstep that sent him down the path to becoming a killer and poring over documentation of Daniel's every move in the 18 months prior to the assassination, Paul becomes a haunted figure. The more elusive the answers are, especially because Daniel refuses to discuss it, the more humbled Paul becomes, until, in a moving and transcendent conclusion, he finds himself finally able to bear the unbearable. Hawley infuses his emotionally harrowing story with compelling questions about the age-old debate over nature-versus-nurture. Powerful reading. --Booklist (Check Catalog)