Acceleration

Title: Acceleration

Author: Graham McNamee

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (2003)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Crime Thriller, Suspense

Length: 210 pages

Synopsis:  Duncan’s summer day job, as gopher in the dungeon-like Toronto Transit Authority’s lost and found, is anything but glamorous.  Looking for a way to spend dull hours, however, Duncan stumbles across a little brown book filled with newspaper clippings and disturbing diary entries.  Sick and twisted descriptions of mutilated animals and arson fill the pages, and Duncan becomes convinced he’s found the diary of a serial killer.  Haunted by recurrent dreams of a drowning victim he was unable to save, Duncan feels that at last he’s been given the chance to redeem himself by catching the book’s creator, but the more he immerses himself in the terrifying diary, the more he becomes convinced that he alone can catch this killer.  As the puzzle unravels, however, the question becomes less of how Duncan will accomplish this, and more about what will happen if he does.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

An excellent book for that hard to please audience: the teenage boy.  Like a summer blockbuster action flick, it’s got a little bit of everything: thrills, suspense, redemption, comic relief, and a pleasantly subtle romance.  Also like that blockbuster, however, Acceleration is just a little too cut-and-dried to reach great heights.  From Duncan’s motivation to the neatly packaged resolution, everything has an explanation.  With the exception of Duncan, all the characters feel somewhat flat and generic, though this doesn’t really detract from a plot driven largely on Duncan’s single-minded quest for redemption.  It plays to everyone’s secret (or not-so-secret) desire to be a hero, solve the crime, and save the day.  With a truly frightening villain lurking behind the scenes, the reader can’t help but hope that Duncan will succeed, and quickly!  Acceleration is a pleasant diversion and certainly worth your time, but probably not about to land on the classics shelf.