The Clockmaker, by Georges Simenon

Dispassionately told little tale about a young boy from small town America who decides one day to commit a crime and how this affects his father, who owns a small clock repair business and who, as far as we know, is very much a creature of stability and habit. In a way he's a lot like the clocks he repairs. One is tempted to see this story as a lesson on the dangers of boredom, or of a kind of intellectual inertia that leads one to chase after thrills so that life might be worth living. By the end of the story the father reflects upon his own life and concludes that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree.