Acceleration by Graham McNamee free essay sample

This is a great book that keeps the reader hooked into it. Once you start reading the book, it is almost impossible to put it down. The main characters in this book is Duncan, a seventeen year old boy and his friends Vinny and Wayne. One of the other main characters are a serial killer with the nickname of Roach. The beginning of the book, Acceleration, is very slow and not a lot goes on. But, as the book goes on there is more action. There is also a lot of detail that lets the reader understand the story, the situation, and the characters. Graham McNamee, the author of the book, is a great writer who definitely knows how to catch the readers attention and how to keep them on their toes. This novel is about a seventeen year old boy who is tormented by the tragic event that happened on a September afternoon, last summer, where he was not able to save a girl from drowning. We will write a custom essay sample on Acceleration by Graham McNamee or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Not being able to save the girl really affected his life, especially with his relationship with his girlfriend Kim. After that incident, he is also terrified of swimming, especially when he gets horrible nightmares that haunt him. Then, this summer, he finds a job working for the lost and found department of the Toronto Transit Commission, which is the Toronto subway. He calls this room The Dungeon because it is way below the busy streets of the city. His job consists of looking through piles of things that people have left in the subway, basically just junk, in where he works from nine in the morning to five o clock in the afternoon from Monday through Friday. Duncan takes this as an opportunity to escape from the horrible memories of the tragedy. At the same time, he also thinks that this job is a nightmare, in where it is the most boring summer job in the whole face of the planet! One day, at the job, while he is looking through dusty shelves and boxes of piles of items that were lost and that are unclaimed, he discovers a little brown leather book. This is where the novel starts to get more and more interesting. Duncans job is all of a sudden, not so boring anymore. The book he finds is not just some regular book, but it is a diary-like journal filled with writing with no name on it. It is a diary that belongs to a psycho, madman, serial killer and it is filled with deep dark secrets. Duncan cannot stop reading this diary and he cannot stop thinking about the fact that the writer of this diary, a total psycho, is somewhere out there in the city. He calls this sick killer, Roach. Duncan is shocked as he explores deeper into the diary in where he reads details about the writers experiments on how the sadistic man tortures and abuses animals. There are also descriptions of him setting fires. As Duncan reads further and further into the diary, he finds out that this sick predator is stalking women in the subway, in where his future plans are to kill these women. Duncan feels like it is up to him to stop this killer before it is way too late. He thinks that the best way to make things better from his failure of the incident of the drowning girl from the summer before is by tracking down the owner of the diary. So he then tells his friends and they all go into this search to track down Roach before he hurts anybody. These three characters have very different characteristics that join together to make the story line interesting. Duncan is considered as the soul of the group, Vinny is the brains, and Wayne the muscles. The three friends go onto this suspenseful mission and adventure to try to track down the killer. The first step they decide to do is give the diary to the police. They try to get help from the police, but the police do not take them seriously. They also do not seem to interested about helping the three teenagers in stopping Roach. So Duncan, Vinny, and Wayne take things upon their own hands. They try to figure out the killerss next move in order to stop him from doing striking and doing horrible things to these women that he has described in his diary. They use clues that are left hidden in the little brown leather diary to set up a better plan to find Roach. What they want to do is try to unconver the identity of this cold-blooded monster so that they can stop him. The three friends decide to do intensive research at the local library in the city to find out more about the killer. They are looking for information like where Roach works and where he lives so that they can show evidence and prove to the police who did not believe them that the diary, the killer, and the incidents in the diary are real. Â  The real main action is when Duncan encounters the killer himself. While Duncan is still trying to piece everything together, he hears a voice that come from the lost and found counter. The voice says, Excuse me. Did you find a journal with a brown leather cover? This actually made chills run up and down my spine because this happened at a time when I did not expect it to happen. This took the story to a whole different level. Duncan has finally found the killer, but the question is, how will he stop this moster from killing and hurting people? Finally, towards the end of the story, Roach chases Duncan down onto the actual tracks of where the subways travel on. Both Duncan and Roach get hit by the subway, which creates more and more suspense and action for the reader because the reader wonders how Duncan will survive from this. The reader then finds out at the end that the narrator and the main character, Duncan, does make it and he survives. The killer, is not that lucky though, he dies. The cover of the book shows a young persons eyes staring ahead. I think that by this, the author is trying to grab the attention of the readers. The title of the book is also very interesting. It is Acceleration, which is very relevant to the story and the novel itself. I think that the author uses Acceleration as the title because he is trying to describe that the killer, Roach, is slowly accelerating in his abnormal and destructive behavior. The killer slowly graduates from mutilating and torturing animals to setting fires to stalking women and having plans to kill them. From reading the novel, it is evident that Graham McNamee is very knowledgeable and he has also done a great amount of research to make the story believable. The information he gives of Roach, a psychopath, and the rest of the characters in the book are credible. What makes Acceleration a believable novel is that it is able to capture your attention and interest, even though some descriptions are very horrific. The characters are normal people that the readers can relate to. For example, Duncan is just a normal teenager that forgets to call his parents to let them know that he is ok, eats at fast food stores and wonders what the heck is in the food, and sleeps till eleven oclock. Duncan is just an average teenager. His friends also have believable characteristics that make them real. For example, Vinnie is a slacker and a know-it-all. At the same time, he is crippled, where he has a deformed hand. Duncans other friend, Wayne, is like a little criminal. He also works at a dairy barn. These details make the character real. Acceleration by Graham McNamee is a very interesting mystery novel. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who wants to read a good book. This is a book that once you start reading it and getting into the story it makes is very hard to put down.