Boy book review - Acceleration

It may be cliché, but ACCELERATION by Graham McNamee, is highly suspense-filled roller coaster of a story. Things begin slowly with Duncan, an ordinary teen in an ordinary boring summer job working for an ordinary – if a little suspicious – boss.


The reader soon discovers that Duncan has a nightmare that won’t release him, the memory of a drowning girl he could not save. He also has a daymare: the knowledge that a man who began by experimenting with mice, cats and dogs, now stalks human victims. The killer has his eye on three women, and its only a matter of time before he selects his next prey.

Duncan’s unwanted summer job at the lost-and-found brings perks, an unclaimed prosthesis, a practically new leather jacket, him a book: the diary of a madman. The level of peril rises quickly as Duncan is sent hurtling into the mind of a serial killer in search of a victim. Duncan juggles loving but clueless parents, a girlfriend who has already dropped him because of his over-protectiveness since the drowning incident, and a boss who has his own reasons for wanting to be buried alive in the world of the subway’s lost-and-found. He is assisted by a supporting cast of two very different friends. Vinny, intelligent but reclusive, a disabled youth who intends to laugh-at-myself-before-others-laugh-at-me but who believes in the danger exposed in the diary and wants to help. And Wayne, Duncan’s long-term always-in-trouble-with-the-law best friend, a young man Duncan doesn’t dare share with until it’s almost too late.

When police refuse to believe the diary is anything but a joke, Duncan first tries to find and warn the victims, then is forced to pursue the killer himself. His nightmare and daymare converge when he uncovers the killer’s dungeon. And the killer himself.


The amixture of thriller and light moments and Duncan’s quest to save an innocent life that kept me turning the pages. Teenaged boys will see themselves in Duncan and his supporting cast: Vinny I’ll friend who believes in the diary and wants to help, and friend Wayne who provides the final clue that helps Duncan vanquish the killer, and the demons that have stalked him since the death at the beach.