JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID, DOESN'T MEAN...: ALISON GAYLIN'S WE ARE WATCHING

Few authors engage with the here and now like Alison Gaylin. Her work often connects with current social and entertainment media, linking the zeitgeist to paranoia in her stand alone work, delivering a seventies Parallax View vibe to the domestic thriller. With this skill, she swings big and knocks it out of the park with We Are Watching.

She gives us a mother-daughter heroine team in Meg and Lily Russo. Meg is behind the wheel when she and her husband Justin are driving Lily to college. A car full of crazed skinheads swerves at them, sending the car off the road and into a wreck that kills Justin.

We pick up up close to four months later, were the two throw themselves into their surroundings to get past the loss. Lily, uses school, where she gets involved with Carl, a too good to be true boyfriend. Meg reopens the bookstore she inherited from her father Nathan, who was in an almost famous prog rock band, for the holiday rush. A video pops up on the store's facebook page of Justin fuming behind the register as a woman croons a creepy sing-song tune. Meg finds the woman in the store, tearing books off the shelves, looking for a secret chamber. Soon after, Lily and Carl are harrassed by two pilce. Incidents in stalking and harassment increase in threat. It appears to be tied to an violent encounter Nathan had in his rock days and a YA fantasy Meg wrote as a kid, that a group believes predicts the end of times.

Gaylin explores how how conspiracy theories can thrive and expand in today's culture. She we know from the news like, "SWATting", and builds on those with a grounded imagination. She shows how can seep into even our institutions. The strong point of view of Meg, Lily, and even Nathan keep it personal and serve an emotional link to the reader, so we're never overwhelmed by the thematics. Her characters are so much of her own design, that you feel they may be based on somebody in our recent history or current culture, but you can never place them. The result is a political thriller style injected into a domestic one.

Alison Gaylin deftly fuses genre with with a true concern for the paranoia that a subculture nurtured by subcultures. It is a mystery where everyone around you could be a culprit. We Are Watching reflects our world, placing it in a dark and suspenseful microcosm.