Acceleration by Graham McNamee - This book is the winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery writing, as well as an Eliot Rosewater Nominee. Rather good billing for any book!
Acceleration is defined as the escalation of increasingly destructive aberrant behavior, or, more pointedly, the stuff of which serial killers are made. Seventeen-year-old Duncan comes faces to face with this "new" term while wasting away his summer by working in the lost and found of the Toronto subway system. That is when he finds it...the diary...made up of the plots and plans of a truly demented man. The Roach, as Duncan dubbs him, plans to "accelerate" his killing ways... graduating from eviscerating animals and setting fires to tracking human prey. When the police refuse to take it seriously, Duncan enlists the aid of his best friends Vinny and Wayne to help him find The Roach on his own...with deadly results.
All in all, a rather good read from the teenage perspective. The plot is rather compelling and all-too real at points. The characters are very real and most teens will be able to relate well to their witty, often crass, language and attitudes about life. My only issue with this book is that it could have been much more developed. The climax comes out of nowhere, really, and the conclusion comes much too soon. McNamee could have done a lot more with this book, but I'll agree that what he did do was done quite well.
All in all, a rather good read from the teenage perspective. The plot is rather compelling and all-too real at points. The characters are very real and most teens will be able to relate well to their witty, often crass, language and attitudes about life. My only issue with this book is that it could have been much more developed. The climax comes out of nowhere, really, and the conclusion comes much too soon. McNamee could have done a lot more with this book, but I'll agree that what he did do was done quite well.
