Acceleration

by Graham McNamee

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McNamee's (Hate You) taut novel reads like a fast-paced nail-biter of a movie. Narrator Duncan has a summer job working in the lost-and-found department of the Toronto subway system, filing away discarded jackets and trinkets, bored by both the work and his sad-sack boss ("If you think of a half-deflated soccer ball with two of the hairiest ears you've ever seen attached to it, you've got a good picture of Jacob"). Among the lost items he discovers a diary, "a little leather book, with a cover that feels like skin": early entries detail the writer's grisly experiments on animals; he later graduates to arson. In his most recent entries, the writer describes three women he sees every day on the subway and tries to decide which one to kill. When the police brush off Duncan ("You don't seem like a bad kid," says the cop at the precinct. "But maybe you should find a better way to spend your summer vacation"), he enlists his friends Vinny and Wayne to help him catch the would-be killer; an ancillary story line, about Duncan's failed attempt to rescue a drowning girl, sheds light on Duncan's desperate need to be a savior. If aspects of the plot seem a bit overdetermined, there remains much to hook the audience. The timing never falters, and the dialogue stays crisp. Duncan and his friends no clean-cut do-gooders have gritty, complex personalities. A well-turned thriller. Ages 12-up.
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Gr 8 Up-Seventeen-year-old Duncan is haunted by the fact that he was unable to save a drowning girl a few yards away one fateful afternoon the previous September. This summer he has a job working underground at the Toronto subway lost and found where he uncovers, amid the piles of forgotten junk, an opportunity to exorcise his own guilty demons. When business is slow, Duncan spends his time rummaging through dusty shelves and boxes of unclaimed items. During one of these sessions, he uncovers a strange, leather-bound book that turns out to be the diary of a would-be serial killer. Unable to tear himself from the gory descriptions of tortured animals and arson, he discovers that the writer has started to stalk women on the subway. When the police seem disinterested, the teen takes matters into his own hands, and with the aid of his two best friends, tries to track and trap the murderer before he can strike. This chilling page-turner is all thrills, and the author cleverly manipulates readers' sense of disbelief by eliminating the possibility of police help or parental understanding. What results is one teen's self-conscious yet fast-paced journey into the mind of a cold-blooded killer, and the resulting manhunt will keep readers on the edge of their seats.-Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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