Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"This is a 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 till 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. Wayne's planning to torch the thing (the uniform, not the Barn) before we head back for our last year of high school.
"So I'm here under protest, a political prisoner of the capitalist overlord otherwise known as Dad."

So begins ACCELERATION, a strikingly believable and seamlessly crafted YA thriller packed full of laugh-out-loud scenes and hysterical one-liners.

ACCELERATION is the story of what happens after seventeen year-old Duncan discovers that a misplaced journal turned into that Lost and Found office contains an anonymous man's plans to murder at least one of the women whom the man is stalking. Still plagued by nightmares of the previous summer's tragedy (While he was swimming in Lake Ontario, a girl he didn't know began screaming and drowned before he could reach her.), Duncan is determined to save these unknown women. And before he's done, Duncan's gotten his two friends deeply involved:

"What you should know about Vinny and Wayne is that they're sort of friends by default. Me and Wayne have been hanging out since we used to eat dirt together in the sandbox in the park. Vin came along about five years ago and fell in with me. The way I figure it, Vinny's the brains of our operation, Wayne's the muscle, and I'm the soul--or maybe the lower intestine. Who knows?"

Vinny persuades Duncan to inform the authorities. But as he suspected, Duncan finds that the cops are too busy to deal with the journal:

"[Detective] Jack snaps the book shut and sets it on the counter. 'You know how many seriously deranged people we've got in the greater metropolitan area?' he asks me.
"I shrug, shaking my head.
" 'Upwards of fifty thousand. And a lot of them like to scribble down the diarrhea that runs through their brains.' "

So Duncan sets his mind to tracking down the perpetrator himself.

Seeing how Wayne's and Duncan's arrests four years earlier for trying to steal toilets out of a house under construction, how Duncan's watching Doctor Zhivago with his mom in the midst of a summer heat wave, and how Vinny's obsession with Arnold Schwarzenegger all become parts of this intricate puzzle and lead us toward the breathless climax makes ACCELERATION one mesmerizing trip through the heart and bowels of Toronto.

(And if you are traveling to Toronto in June for ALA/CLA, the Toronto Transit Commission's lost and found is located at the Bay Subway Station.)

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com