Edgar Winner: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Michael can't speak out loud. He's trapped in his head, always reliving a particular day that happened when he was only eight years old, a day when he needed to be very very quiet. But he has two survival skills that developed in compensation: he can draw, and he's taught himself to open locks of all kinds. In the back of his mind: the Day, over and over. In the foreground: psychiatrists, teachers, his uncle, all trying to help, all unable to understand what he’s been going through since that Day. And then—he falls in love, and someone who covets his lock-opening talent uses that love to own him. Long story short: Michael goes to jail.

The Lock Artist moves back and forth between Michael’s present, where he’s writing his story from his cell, to his past, where he’s doing safe-cracking jobs for an unnamed much-feared businessman, to his time in high school, where he changed overnight from being a struggling teenager with a chance at art college to being a criminal mixed up with the mob.

I’ve said this before: I’m not generally fond of gangster stories. They tend to be a little predictable— some greedy short-sighted people get rich, some greedy short-sighted people get whacked. This book is different. Michael is no gangster: he’s a kid in love so chained to his past that he can’t see any way to get free. Does he get free? Well, he’s the lock artist, but in real life and good books, things are never that simple.