Acceleration

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

More character development than I'd expect from a YA thriller! The main characters all felt realistic, and I liked that their reasons for not just going to the cops felt like they made sense. Given the genre, I wasn't sure if the diary and the "killer" would end up being real or not (YA tends to hover between sending teens after a real killer, and sending the message that "teens shouldn't do anything dangerous".) I wasn't sure which side of the line this would fall on. An enjoyable read with some really nice tense moments.

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.

Excellent book about a boy called Duncan who works at the lost and found department of an underground railway system. One day he stumbles across a notebook with hand written entries and curious, he starts reading...and finds himself plunged into the mind of a psychopath. He can't stop reading and he wonders if he should tell the "authorities" about what this man has done and plans to do. And then one day, a man comes looking at Lost and Found for a brown notebook he left on the train.. Seriously creepy novel with Duncan's minor problems in life contrasting brilliantly against the rantings of the notebook owner. Full of suspense and intrigue. Highly recommended.

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 show more 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. show less

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.