Acceleration

By Graham McNamee

It’s a hot, hot summer, and in the depths of the Toronto Transit Authority’s Lost and Found, 17-year-old Duncan is cataloging lost things and sifting through accumulated junk. And between Jacob, the cranky old man who runs the place, and the endless dusty boxes overflowing with stuff no one will ever claim, Duncan’s just about had enough. Then he finds a little leather book. It’s a diary filled with the dark and dirty secrets of a twisted mind, a serial killer stalking his prey in the subway. And Duncan can’t make himself stop reading.

What would you do with a book like that? How far would you go to catch a madman?

And what if time was running out. . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Children's Books
• Release date: Dec 18, 2008
• ISBN: 9780307510228

Book preview

ONE

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 on Labor Day (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.

Here’s the one-minute tour of the place. First, to get here you have to come to Bay subway station and take the service elevator down to the subbasement. At the end of the hall to your left you’ll find the door marked LOST AND FOUND. Jacob, my supervisor, sits at the front counter cataloguing the lost junk that comes in from the buses and subways in the transit system. 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. Past the counter there’s a maze of stacks holding row after row, shelf after dusty shelf of lost stuff.

I’m trying on a black leather jacket in the stacks when the bell at the counter dings. The jacket’s term expires in a week, so it’ll soon be appearing in my closet as part of the Duncan collection. One ding of the bell means Jacob needs me to search for something. Two dings means hurry up. Three dings—things get ugly.

When I get to the counter, Jacob’s asking an old woman about the weather up on the surface. Spending eight hours a day in this dungeon, you tend to forget that the sun is still shining up there.

They say it’s going to hit a hundred and three today, the woman tells him. Not a cloud in the sky.

It’s been six weeks with no rain. Major heat wave. But down here you’d never know. The city could be bombed to ashes and we’d still be here sorting through the piles.

Duncan, we’re looking for a pair of glasses, Jacob tells me. Silver frames. Bifocals.

I sigh. Right. This might take a while.

Eyeglasses rank in the top four on the list of most often lost items, right up there with umbrellas, cell phones, and books.

I’m the runner, the one who does the actual searching. Jacob does the actual sitting.

I don’t know who did this job before me—don’t know if anybody did it before me—but the place is a mess. The way it works, stuff gets held here for three months. Everything’s got a Post-it with an expiration date. Anything unclaimed gets boxed up for the quarterly sale down at the YMCA. But if you poke around, you’ll find stuff that’s been here for two years or more. I pulled a college sweater off the top shelf the other day, and the dust coming off it drifted down like snow.

Lost junk is organized in sections. All the jackets are together, including my black leather beauty. Dozens of umbrellas are heaped in a pile, enough rain protection to keep every last flea on Noah’s ark dry. There’s a library of forgotten books overflowing the packed shelves. And there are two boxes of eyeglasses, separated into sunglasses and regular. I dig in.

There’s an amazing variety, everything from prescription swimming goggles to your basic thick-black-framed geek glasses to your old-lady specials with the necklace holders attached to the arms. I find a pair that fits the lady’s description—bifocals, silver frames. Holding them up to peer through the lenses, I see they’ve got enough magnifying power to count the hairs on a mosquito’s butt.

That’s them, the old woman says after trying them on.

Jacob makes her sign the claims book, as if the glasses are worth more than the dollar they’d get at the Y sale.

I’m lost without these, she tells us. I’m so blind without them, I didn’t realize until I was halfway here that I’d put hand lotion on my face instead of sunscreen. I can already feel a burn starting up.

Jacob nods. Yeah. With the holes in the ozone and global warming, the sun’s not as friendly as it used to be.

The woman shivers, pulling her jacket closed. Well, it’s certainly cool down here.

We’re about fifty feet underground—deeper than the subway tunnels—so the temperature stays a constant cool year-round. This must be what it feels like to be buried alive. That’s Jacob’s idea of funny. I think he’s been down here too long.

The woman gives him a nervous look and mumbles her thanks as she makes for the door.

You’ve really got a way with the ladies, I say when she’s gone.

No response.

I fill a paper cup at the cooler, leaning on it as it gurgles to itself, and watch the clock crawl toward eternity. Jacob goes back to reading the newspaper.

Past him, there’s a glass case on the wall that once held a fire axe but now has an artificial leg standing inside. That leg is like the official mascot of all the forgotten junk in the lost and found. There’s a worn-down blue men’s Puma running shoe on its foot, and it’s obviously been well used. It always gets me wondering—how do you lose something like that? I mean, didn’t the guy notice something was missing when he went hopping off the subway—that the world was bouncing up and down more than usual? What happened, that he never came back to claim it? Jacob says the thing’s been here for three years.

He taps his pen on the counter, pondering the word jumble in today’s Lifestyle section. He taps the seconds away, tapping seconds into hours into days. Jacob’s a lifer. He doesn’t even hear the clock anymore.

I’m going stir-crazy down here. I mean, look at Jacob with his hairy gray ears; wrinkles creasing into other wrinkles until his face looks like he fell asleep on a screen door. Then there’s the wet clicking sound he makes when he’s playing with the upper plate of his false teeth. Two months down here and that’s what I’m going to look like.

I push off from the cooler and wander back into the stacks to kill the last half hour of the day. Subway thunder rumbles through the ceiling as a train pulls into Bay Station. A slight draft breezes through the room whenever a train goes by, and the fluorescent lights overhead flicker at the rumbling, like torches in the wind. It feels like a medieval dungeon down here.

I have a lawn chair set up back in the stacks for when I get tired of staring at Jacob and he gets tired of me bitching. Nearby are the shelves of lost books. Old and new. Hardcover, paperback, science fiction, romance, mystery, medical, true crime, horror, history—anything and everything.

Scanning the titles, I see a few Stephen Kings I’ve already read.

And then there’s a small, thick hardcover. No jacket, no title on the spine. Just plain brown leather. I sit back on my lawn chair and flip through it.

Not really a book book at all, it’s some kind of journal or notebook. I turn the yellow-edged pages. Near the beginning I find what looks like notes from a science experiment. There’s a graph showing different times running vertically up the side, with different liquids listed horizontally along the bottom. At first I think it’s a graph of how long each liquid takes to reach the boiling point. We did that one in chemistry a few years ago.

It’s hard to tell. This person’s handwriting is like epileptic chicken scratch. Filling the margins are doodles in black and green ink of all different kinds of eyes. Round eyes, slit eyes, bloodshot and crying eyes, and ones that look like they’ve come loose from their sockets. Real seventh-grade gross-out stuff.

It takes me a couple seconds to crack the code and decipher what the caption says at the top. DROWNING TIMES. It’s underlined twice in green. I focus on the crabbed writing at the bottom of the page.

white mice, litter of six. ten weeks old.

I study the graph again. On the side are times ranging from zero to five minutes. Along the bottom different liquids are listed: water, turpentine, beer, Windex, gasoline.

This is no science experiment—at least none we ever did in school.

I look at the various times in relation to liquids, understanding finally what it means. My stomach twists around. It’s an experiment to find out how long it takes for mice to drown in different liquids.

This is really warped.

I turn a few more pages and find some yellowed newspaper clippings. One reads:

On March 14, two cats were found hanging by their necks from lengths of chain, nailed to telephone poles in a back alley of Wilson Heights. The animals had been eviscerated. Anyone with information is asked to call Crimestoppers.

The word eviscerated is circled in red, and in the margin the writer of this thing has scribbled: Big word from a small mind.

There are other clippings, with headlines reading: GRISLY

DISCOVERY, ANIMAL ABUSE EPIDEMIC, PET OWNERS WARNED TO KEEP CATS INDOORS.

This is some sick nut’s little diary.

I drop the book on the floor, wiping my palms on my jeans, feeling dirty just from touching it. I shake my head. The world is full of ugly, twisted people. There, that’s my Mr. Rogers thought for the day.

The bell at the front desk rings five times. Either it’s quitting time or Jacob’s having a stroke. Getting up, I step on the book like it’s a roach I’m trying to kill. Then I kick it so it skitters across the cement floor.

Walking away down the aisle, I can’t help thinking how it’s not always that easy to kill a roach.

TWO

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.

Here’s how it goes.

A blistering day at Kayuga Beach. I’m in the water, about eight feet deep, skimming along the sandy bottom. It’s clear enough that I can see the muddy clouds my hands stir up with every stroke.

Mom says I was born to swim. She took me to baby swim classes before I could even walk. She’d hold her hand under my stomach and I’d start paddling like I was ready to do laps. I saw on TV somewhere how it’s a natural instinct; comes from evolving from fish. They say when you’re real tiny in the womb, for a few weeks there, you have gills.

So that’s me. Fishboy.

I used to time how long I could hold my breath underwater. Two minutes thirty seconds I hit one time, turning purple with my lungs exploding.

I’m running out of air now, kicking up to the surface to breathe again. I squint against the million-watt sunlight. Back on the beach I can just make out where Wayne and Vinny are sucking down Slurpees.

There’s a girl screaming in the water, probably getting splashed or playing tag. Girls are always screaming—at the beach, in school, on MTV.

I dive under again, where it’s quieter. Some sound travels underwater. Like those motorboats out on the lake. They’re a mile away, but I can still hear them down here, kind of like a mosquito buzzing. The water’s getting deeper, the bottom dark and cool, the sand turning to black mud.

Pearl divers can hold their breath for five minutes, so they can get to the bottom, where the oysters are, and back. I once watched a frog sit underwater for fifteen minutes, just hanging out. No panic. Like it could live down there.

Between one stroke and the next, the temperature drops from cool to near freezing, and the light filtering down disappears. Dark as midnight here. I can’t have gone so deep so fast. Pushing off the bottom, my feet sink into the mud a few inches. For a second it’s like the mud doesn’t want to let me go, and I have to kick to get loose. Swimming to the surface takes longer than it should. It’s as if with every stroke I take, the water gets that much deeper, like I’m swimming in place. My lungs start to burn, and there’s the growing thunder in my ears of my own heartbeat amplified. I feel like shouting but there’s no air left, and nobody to hear.

I break the surface gasping, blinded by the sun after the cold midnight below. Feeling dazed and dizzy, I hear screaming. I’m so disoriented for a second I wonder if it’s me.

But no. It’s that girl still, her shrieks broken up by coughs and splashing. I turn in the water, dog-paddling. The people back on the beach are so far away they look like insects. And they’re all rushing into the lake now, a dozen ants swimming out toward me. But it’s not me they’re headed for. It’s the girl. I try to stretch up and see farther across the surface, above the small waves making their way to shore.

And there, about thirty feet away, between me and the beach, I see an arm flailing, fighting against the water. For maybe a quarter of a second a face is visible above the surface, a pair of eyes. Wide eyes, blind with fear.

I’m frozen for a second by that look. I’ve never seen anyone so scared. But then my brain clicks and I realize that we’re too far out for those people rushing toward us to get here in time.

There’s only me. So I kick toward her, my arms flying in a frantic crawl. The water seems to stretch like before, only now it’s not getting deeper but wider, dragging her farther away from me like some freak riptide. Between strokes, I catch freeze-frames of her going under, the water churning around her. Her mouth wide open, choking and screaming, fighting for air. Eyes wild, and dark as the black mud at the bottom of the lake. Then there’s just an arm sticking up. I’m maybe ten feet away when her hand disappears.

Sucking a deep breath, I go

Reviews for Acceleration

[dawn.zimmerer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Acceleration by Graham McNamee

From Goodreads.com:
“It’s a hot, hot summer, and in the depths of the Toronto Transit Authority’s Lost and Found, 17-year-old Duncan is cataloging lost things and sifting through accumulated junk. And between Jacob, the cranky old man who runs the place, and the endless dusty boxes overflowing with stuff no one will ever claim, Duncan’s just about had enough. Then he finds a little leather book. It’s a diary filled with the dark and dirty secrets of a twisted mind, a serial killer stalking his prey in the subway. And Duncan can’t make himself stop reading.

What would you do with a book like that? How far would you go to catch a madman?

And what if time was running out. . . .”

Duncan is an average kid living an average life in a blue collar section of Toronto. He takes a summer job working in the lost and found (aka “The Morgue”) of the subway. There he finds a diary and decides to read it.

Once he realizes it is the diary of a serial killer in training Duncan doesn’t know what to do. He tries to take it to the police, who ignore him. He decides to try to find out who “Roach” (the nickname he gives the diary’s author) is and what is his next move. He enlists first the help of his friend Vinnie. Vinnie is smart and soon figures out where “Roach” feels most comfortable. That is where he is likely to strike, or so Vinnie believes because of all the books he has read.

Wayne is Duncan’s oldest friend. They grew up in “the jungle” (the nickname of the housing complex where all three live) together. Wayne is a petty criminal and is working at a fast food place for the summer. Wayne and Vinnie don’t get along so Duncan ends up working first with Vinnie and then with Wayne to solve this mystery.

It isn’t the most realistic mystery ever. How many teenage boys would actually stalk a serial killer, and then break into his house (with his deaf grandmother in the living room)? It is a compelling story though. I wanted Duncan to catch “Roach”.

Each character had his good qualities and his flaws. Vinnie has a deformed arm and hand and is super sensitive about it. He is smart but cautious. Wayne is not the sharpest knife in the drawer but he is street savvy and that comes in handy when Duncan decides to break into “Roach’s” house. Duncan is plagued by a drowning death he witnessed and was unable to save the girl. He is looking for some sort of redemption.

I listened to the audio CD of this book. The reader did an excellent job of setting the tone and the mood. I would recommend this book to teen boys but I think girls will enjoy it too. It is, as many mysteries are, fairly predictable but an entertaining read.

[ftbooklover · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Acceleration starts with a great premise: a teenager takes a summer job at the transit authority lost and found department in Toronto. While working in the "stacks," he finds a lost diary. As he reads it, he realizes that it is the rantings of what is probably a serial killer. If this story had remained focused on the mystery of finding the serial killer, it could have been a really good story, but it gets mired in the personal life of the main character. Most of the story deals with Duncan and his relationship with his friends and family, which changed dramatically after an unsuccessful attempt to save a drowning girl in a pool during a previous summer. Now he sees his attempt to find the serial killer as an attempt at redemption. The book moves very slowly after the initial problem is introduced and doesn't really pick up again until near the end of the book. The ending is as unsatisfying as most of the rest of the story. To say the least, a very disappointing book.

[aalyssa0714 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am quite disappointed with this book. It was anticlimactic and failed to give justice to a premise that would’ve made for a really terrific, suspenseful read.The only positive thing about this book is that it’s a fast-paced and quick read—which is also the main reason for my not enjoying it. The execution is severely lacking and left much to be desired.

There are a lot of plot points and progression that could’ve been elaborated on for the readers to establish a bond with the characters, empathize and relate to them, just to get to know them a bit more, especially the complicated relationships they have—from Duncan’s somewhat awkward way of getting along with his mother; to his longing for his ex-girlfriend that he obviously still has feelings for; and even his bond with his eccentric best friend who he sometimes does petty theft with.

Everything about the plot has just been rushed. The characters’ personalities—even the Duncan’s, the main character—are glossed over, and there is hardly any proper build-up for the subplots. It was a decent read, but it could’ve been more.

[jothebookgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book sort of meanders until about halfway through, the you just better hold on for the ride to they end.

How do authors come up with such clever and captivating story ideas? Graham McNamee has a unique one with Acceleration.

A teenager, Duncan, is working a summer job below the streets in the subway. He's in the lost and found department where massive amounts of stuff are stored waiting for owners to claim; sunglasses, hats, bowling balks, a leather bound book. The job is seriously boring, so Duncan one day picks up the leather bound journal and leafs through. This is no ordinary rendition of a persons thoughts. It is the intricate thoughts and plans of a madman who starts with the torture of small animals. When this is no longer fulfilling, he progresses to stalking women and planning their capture and torture. All of this is detailed in this book. But could it just be words on a paper? Duncan follows the notes in the journal which does lead him to a woman the writer is slowly following or stalking her unawares. Duncan realized, the man he has dubbed, Roach, is very close to carrying out his evil plan to take and torture this unsuspecting woman. Acceleration refers to serial killers who start off torturing animals then must accelerate to humans to fulfill their sick desires.

Now what does a kid do with this kind of info? Will the cops take him seriously or blow him off for being a kid with an over active imagination! Whatever, Duncan has launched himself I into a deadly game.

[yourotherleft_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Acceleration is the short tale of Duncan, who lives in a low rent apartment block in Toronto called "The Jungle" and has secured, for the long hot summer, a job rooting through the lost and found objects of the Toronto transit authority. Among the assorted and unexpected detritus left behind on subways and city buses, Duncan uncovers the diary of a man who Duncan supposes is a serial killer, or at least about to become one.

Faced with police that don't seem to care and a desire to atone for the last time he failed to be a hero, Duncan feels a responsibility to seek out the author of the morbid book. As the summer wears on, Duncan and his friend Vinny embark on an ill-advised quest to find the near-felon that has haunted Duncan's thoughts ever since he laid eyes on the book. In the end, of course, Duncan gets much more than he bargained for when he decided to take the law into his own hands.

The first thought I had upon finishing Acceleration is that, in a world where a lot of YA seems to cater to a female audience, Acceleration is definitely a book that would hold a strong appeal for boys. It's a short, quick-reading mystery populated with well-written and believable male characters out to prove their worth in a world that doesn't promise much to them. For me, it required a bit more suspension of disbelief than I had to offer, but for its target audience, there is more than enough realism to satisfy.

Acceleration is also a great book for all the Criminal Minds fans out there. McNamee, it seems, wrote an interesting mystery about profiling serial killers before profiling serial killers became big entertainment. Along with offering a fast-moving story, McNamee introduces the basics of criminal profiling in a way that is instructive without being boring. While Acceleration probably won't be in the running for my favorite book of the year, Duncan's world, for one summer at least, is vivid and dangerous and makes for quick, enjoyable reading that is still highly recommendable.

[alsparks324 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Duncan is 17 and lives in the Jungle, a blue collar apartment complex in Toronto. He has had a run in with the law and now his father found him summer work in the lost & found department of the city's transit authority. He also is haunted by memories of not being able to save a young girl that drowned while he was swimming nearby. As Duncan works his menial job he is rummaging through lost items and comes across a plain journal. He begins to leaf through and notices some disturbing items about animal abuse. As he looks further he sees the author of the journal starting to talk about hunting women. Duncan is concerned and begins to enlist the help of his friends Wayne & Vinny to try and unravel the mystery and find this budding psycho. He tries to alert the police but they see him as a waste of their time so Duncan decides it is up to him to redeem himself and find this possible killer before it's too late. Using clues in the journal and the help of his friends Duncan gets deeper and deeper into this disturbing situation. Will the author of the journal really kill? Is Duncan too late? Can he atone for the mistakes of his past? A great, quick read that keeps you turning the pages.

[lindap69 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

guy book with fast-paced adventure peppered with sarcastic humor

[librarybrandy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Decent action/suspense mystery. I can see the appeal and I'll probably add it to my booktalks list, but it's not my favorite thing I've read (or listened to).

[wickedwowestwood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this fast moving, sometimes edgy mystery. It is about a young teen who finds a diary of a killer wile working in the lost and found of the transit system. The police do not take him seriously so he sets out to find the man with his two friends. Not an action that I would recommend but it works for them.

[auor611 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought that it was a good book and not like any other out there. Also i thought it was a good length and never got boring.

[lynnsigman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Listened to - which added to the suspense (I couldn't jump ahead to see if it was safe). Ending missing some detail, but maybe that's more real life.

[wsrobitaille · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Over the summer Duncan gets a job working in the subways lost and found, and discovers a journal that seems to belong to a serial killer in training. Plagued by a traumatic experience that happened a year before, and having to cope with a less than stellar personal record, Duncan becomes obsessed with redeeming himself by finding the man who wrote the journal. The journal includes lists about three women that the writer has been stalking, including their descriptions and travel schedules, Duncan fears that if he doesn’t do something soon, one of them will die.

Acceleration is an interesting and compelling read, livened up with sarcastic humour, and is the kind of story that keeps you wanting to know what happens next. I liked the language used to tell the story, which is told in the first person and helps to show us Duncan’s character, who is both complex, naive and completely believable. His friend’s characters also create an interesting layer to the story, although they are all typical teenage boys, Vinny has a disabled hand and Wayne has a criminal record. I also enjoyed the fact that this book is written by a Canadian author and the realism created having it set in the subway system of Toronto.

It Won the 2004 Arthur Ellis Awards: Best Juvenile; 2004 Edgar Allan Poe Awards: Best Young Adult; 2007 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers; and was a nominee for YRCA in 2006.

[jacquelyn9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The novel, acceleration, encompasses how something as simple as a book can change what will happen tomorrow. In the beginning,Duncan, the protagonist struggles with a serial killers diary that Duncan has found at his work. Throughout the middle, Duncan feels like he needs to find him before he kills again.By the end he has learned how to stalk the stalker serial killer.

[kaybowes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Duncan works in the subway Lost and Found. When he finds a diary/journal full of murderous thoughts and words, he decides to find this creep and try to stop him. Duncan also has his own ghosts -- the face and voice of a drowning girl he was unable to save.

Good yarn -- boy main character. Canadian.

[stornelli-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Working in the Lost and Found of the TTC for the summer, seventeen-year-old Duncan finds a leather book, a diary filled with the secrets of a twisted mind, a serial killer stalking his prey in the subway. He can’t stop reading it and is determined to find the madman.

Story narrated by Duncan. It is suspenseful as he puts himself in danger throughout the story. Title refers to his escape from the killer's home at the end of the book.

This book reads like a real life murder mystery / detective story. It describes what life is like underground in the subway system. Reading the diary, Duncan could have turned it over to the police but instead chose to keep it to himself, and by pursuing the killer, he puts his own life in danger.

Awards

WINNER 2004 - ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers
WINNER 2004 - ALA Best Books for Young Adults

[crystaljoy04 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's the summer before senior year for high school student Duncan. He is miserable in the summer heat and working his boring job in the lost and found of the subway station in Toronto. After rummaging through "lost" books at this job, he finds a leather bound diary of a potentially dangerous man. He and his friend Vinny search for clues using the diary and together try and catch this Roach before he acts out his fantasy of killing someone.

This was a pretty good book. Duncan is an interesting character trying to do the right thing. I felt this was very true to life and depicted well on what a sixteen year old boy would do if in this situation. It holds your attention throughout and I found myself hoping that he would catch Roach and hoping that he wouldn't get into trouble along the way. Great ending! ... had my heart pounding. It is a young adult book that I would recommend to any high schooler.

[thoughtsofjoylibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Duncan's boring, summer job at the Lost & Found in Toronto's subway often leaves him time to pick up a not yet claimed book. One day while looking for something to read, he stumbles upon a diary. As Duncan begins to read it, he discovers that it is filled with serial killer type jottings. Out of concern for the safety of others, he takes it to the police who appear to be uninterested, so he proceeds to investigate on his own.

What a great find! I picked this up months ago on a whim and loaded it onto my iPod. Although, if I were to do it all over again, I would read the hand-held version. The narrator, Scott Brick, who I absolutely love, made the teenagers sound older than they really were. On several occasions, I had to remind myself that they were teens. Other than that - the characters were true-to-life, the plot, while a little unconventional, piqued my curiosity and kept me listening, and the pace at which the book accelerated was executed with precision. Well done. (4.5/5)

Originally posted on: Thoughts of Joy

[mhg123_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sixteen year old Duncan works in the "dungeon", the lost and found department of the Toronto Transit Commossion. All belongings left on the subway make there way here. Duncan finds a leather-bound diary chronicling a serial killer ("Roach") in the making. The cops aren't interested, so Duncan sets out to stop him.

[rabooktalker · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fast-paced and scary read which takes place during the summer in Toronto. Duncan works in the subway's lost and found office. When he finds a leather bound diary and realizes he's reading the diary of a murderer, he becomes obsessed with saving the killer's next victim...

[trishwalton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a real page-turner. I was willing to "suspend my disbelief" that 2 teenage kids would even dare to track down a potential serial killer because when the boys went to the cops, they were indifferent. I like that the author thought about how I (as an adult...and teacer) might react...and responded with a realistic scenario.

The ending is truly exciting - I don't recall turning pages...just reading as fast as I could. Great book!

[ewyatt_16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ohh...this book was creepy and action packed. Duncan gets stuck with a horrible summer job. Working in the back room in the lost and found at the subway in Toronto, he finds a diary. He starts to read it and is shocked by what he finds - a detailed account of animal killings, arson, and a desire to do something bigger. Duncan is being haunted by his own demons. He tried to save a drowning girl the summer before, but didn't quite get to her in time. He talks his friends, Vinnie and Wayne, to help him investigate this mystery man after the police refuse to take the issue seriously. Wow, I couldn't put this book down - especially the last few chapters!

[mvillhauer_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

3. Seventeen year old Duncan is working in the lost and found of the Toronto Subway system for the summer. His job is to sort through and organize all the forgotten items. When he stumbles upon a leather-bound journal, Duncan realizes that he is holding in his hands the diary of a madman possessed with torturing animals, burning buildings, and now hunting women on the subway. With the help of his friends, Duncan takes it upon himself to track down this potential murderer. The plot is faced paced and the text works well in audio format. The characters in the book are well laid out and believable.

[yarmando_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Minutes into this book, I knew it was worth listening to. Narrated in the present, Duncan
works in the subway lost-and-found ("the morgue, where careers go to die"), where among "the library of forgotten books" he discovers the diary of a serial killer. Still emotionally suffering from his inability to save a drowning woman the year before, Duncan feels compelled to try to stop the writer before he follows through on his plans.

[slightlyfan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. This book is one of the best teen fiction novels I have read in a LONG time. I really liked the humor and the character interaction. I seriously found myself laughing at some of their spontaneous comments.

A great mystery with good characters. Though the ending was good, I feel like it was a little bit of a let down. It felt like they worked too hard for it to end like that. But I can see why McNamee ended it that way.

If you liked this book, I highly suggest The Killer's Cousin and Locked Inside; both by Nancy Werlin. They both have the same kind of mystery and the same kind of humor.

[sassafras_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While working in the Lost and Found of the Toronto transit authority, Duncan finds a diary of a serial killer. Duncan decides that he must find the killer and stop him. Duncan sees it as sort of a redemption for not saving a drowning girl the previous summer.