Acceleration. Graham McNamee. New York, NY: Wendy Lamb Books (Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd.), 2003. 210 pp., cloth, $23.95. ISBN 0-385-73119-1. Subject Headings: Serial murders-Fiction. Diaries-Fiction. Summer employment-Fiction. Toronto (Ont.)-Fiction. Canada-Fiction. Mystery and detective stories. Grades 9 and up / Ages 14 and up. Review by Joanne Peters. **** /4

excerpt:

I had the dream again. It's been a couple of months since the last one. I was hoping I could forget about it, hoping it would forget about me. Leave me alone.

The dream's always the same. When I was little I used to hate reruns on TV, the way everybody would make the same mistakes over again. That's what the dream is, a rerun where everything that went wrong the first time goes wrong again. And no matter how hard I fight I can't change anything.

In fact, the dream is a real-life nightmare. Duncan, a natural-born swimmer, completely in his element, is at Kayuga Beach, Lake Ontario. Testing his ability to stay under water, he submerges, returns to the surface and hears "a girl screaming in the water, probably getting splashed or playing tag. Girls are always screaming – at the beach, in school, on MTV." But, the screaming goes on, and when Duncan comes up from the next plunge, he sees a girl drowning, her eyes "blind with fear." Swimming out to save her, he sees her terrible life and death struggle. And then, he wakes up, remembering the girl he could not save.

     Now, for another nightmare.

Working at the Toronto Transit Commission's lost and found. Nine to five. Monday to Friday. A little slice of death, one day at a time.

For me, it's a two-month sentence, July and August. I would have been happy bumming around until September but Dad called in a favor to get me in here. And at least I don't have to wear a uniform like my bud Wayne over at the Dairy Barn.... So I'm here under protest, a political prisoner of the capitalist overlord otherwise known as Dad.

     And it's here, amongst the lost umbrellas, cell phones, and eyeglasses that Duncan, 17, finds a book -- a journal actually -- filled with crabbed writing listing the boiling points of various liquids, strange doodles of all different kinds of eyes, coded information, old newspaper clippings detailing the grisly torture and deaths of various animals. He realizes that "this is some sick nut's little diary." With plenty of slack time at the TTC lost and found, and his elderly supervisor, whiling away the hours reading the paper or listening to ball games on his pocket radio, Duncan is drawn back to the diary. Reading further, he realizes that the diary's author is pursuing bigger quarry than mice and family pets:

Been hunting. Riding the subway, searching the faces for the right one. All the pretty ladies sitting across from me. It's like an audition. A cattle call.

     The writer – Duncan nicknames him "Roach" -- is a stalker, and he will kill again. Finding him becomes Duncan's mission, because this time, he will change something: he will save Roach's intended victim. With his buddies Wayne (the Dairy Barn wage slave and minor league delinquent) and Vinny (born with a deformed hand and capable of inventing brilliant stories to explain his disability), they stalk the stalker, even though Vinny states that "Me and you going after this guy, ... it's like the Hardy Boys meet Hannibal Lecter."

     I'm not going to tell you how it all ends, but I will tell you that this book kept me turning the pages in a way that few young adult novels have. The writing is, by turns, suspenseful, brilliant and witty – and I was actually sore from laughing at descriptions like "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" (Duncan's supervisor at the TTC lost and found). Humour in a young adult novel is important. Equally important are well-drawn male characters – there just isn't enough fiction like this to get guys reading. Duncan, Vinny and Wayne are high-school guys living in any urban working-class neighbourhood, and their parents are average Canadians straight out of a Tim Horton's commercial. And the mystery behind this story is as compelling as any of the true crime shows so currently popular on television. You believe this story, and you care about these characters.

     Acceleration pulls you along and gathers speed just as an accelerant in a fire speeds up combustion. Read it, buy it, and recommend it, especially to your reluctant male readers. Some of the language can be a bit sophisticated, but it's a book definitely worth persevering. Let's hope that McNamee's publisher gets it into paperback format soon, and keeps the edgy cover art, as well.

Highly Recommended.

Joanne Peters is a teacher-librarian at Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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