Acceleration essay

This is the teaser to an amazing book I read “ Acceleration” By: Graham Menace. Duncan the main leading character of the story discovers a journal belonging to what he thinks is a serial killer and he uses his knowledge of profiling as well as the clues from the journal to try to decipher who the serial killer is and who are his intended victims before the serial killer strikes. Duncan is a bad kid that’s been in trouble with the law who has been sent to work at the Toronto Transit Commission’s lost and found in order to complete his two-months of community service.

He and his friend Wayne ere sentenced to community service after Wayne convinced Duncan to break into a new apartment building to steal an expensive toilet that they could sell to his uncle for some quick cash. The two teens end up getting caught when the toilet falls down the stairs and alerts the cop on duty that night. At his new job, Duncan finds a journal chronicling some person’s sick experiments with mice but he doesn’t know whether he should report it since the journal has no details about who its author is. Duncan continues reading the diary and finds out that the writer might have been responsible for a cent fire in his neighborhood. As he reads further, he notices that the person seems to be chronicling all his crimes since he was young until he’s older.

Duncan finally reads that the person is tired of the “ little crimes” and wants to do something big and he hints in his journal that it may involve women. The author keeps tabs on the train schedules of certain women and even gives them nicknames. Duncan nicknames the author Roach, and decides to try to find out who he is and whether the journal is referring to real people. I thought it was interesting that Duncan came upon this interesting adventure while working at the Toronto Transit Authority’s Lost and Found. I specifically liked the idea of using the clues left behind in a nondescript journal and being able to pinpoint the different “ characters” described in the journal by finding them on the subway. Its weird to think that all of this pretty much happened by accident and that if he wouldn’t have found that book this whole story would have changed drastically.

Also still wondering why the police didn’t believe him, don’t understand why the police would think that a kid would lie about a psychopath killing animals and wanting to kill people. Good characterization from Duncan to Finny, Wayne, and Dunce’s boss Jacob. Even the parents have personalities without taking up valuable story time. Menace is able to develop these people through his scenes without annoying pauses from the story to set down details. This is why I aim going to start to read more of Grahams books because of this fact and would love to see how his style of writing varies from book to book. Also another thing I noticed about Graham is that he gets down to the point quite quick when it comes to the characters and its something most people don’t notice but it ally doesn’t take time away from the actual story. My favorite scene was when Duncan is hiding in the cell and Roach finds him. It was a very tense and thrilling moment.

Good thing Duncan had the courage to use the element of surprise to get away otherwise who knows what Roach would have done to him. I would honestly never be able to do something as crazy as that. It takes a great amount of courage to even just be in the same room with the “ Bad Guy” of the story and it rarely happens in any stories. Still blows my mind that he was that brave or you could say dumb enough to charge at the door full peed even though “ Roach” was on the other side. Eke that Duncan isn’t exactly the smoothest amateur detective ever portrayed in a teenage mystery novel. Instead, Duncan is a bit bumbling and careless but this makes him more relatable and makes the Story more humorous for the reader.

Duncan in most ways really does resemble many teenagers of the modern day. Like said before he isn’t the smoothest person and I like that because in many other stories you have these teenagers pulling off these amazing acts of justice and it just doesn’t make sense, like its cool and all but its just to over he top. Other then that he is very funny at times and can really be the “ Funny Guy”. Duncan goes on a wild adventure and on some what of a goose chase with this so called “ Roach” and drags all of his friends along with him.

The author did really good on making every little moment as suspenseful as possible and mostly had me on the edge of my seat during certain scenes. If you like adventure and successfulness then highly recommend this book to you because if you do have a sweet tooth for this certain type Of style Of books then you will not regret reading this.