Deadly Famous by Richard Kidd

                                                          

 

 2001   

Stanley Buckle befriends reclusive artist Neville Windrush.  Neville disappears one day and is presumed dead.  His paintings start selling for a lot of money.  Stanley is invited to Neville’s posthumous exhibition.  He learns that Neville is not dead and that there is a plot to kill him in order to keep the price of his work high.

 Stanley works out where Neville is and goes looking for him. He fool s his mother into thinking he is safely on a nature trip.

On the journey he encounters Elsie Robinson and Francesco Allegretto.  Elsie is a motherly figure.  He suspects Allegretto is the contract killer.  It turns out to be Elsie.

There are numerous twists and turns but Neville and Stanley survive. The big surprise is then that Neville is the father of the Stanley’s friend Ewart. Neville had left the island not knowing about Ewart. We get a charming fairy-tale ending.        

The story is framed as Sally’s uncle tells her why the picture of Neville’s that he has has a bullet hole in it. An epilogue shows us Sally and her uncle being taken by helicopter to Neville’s exhibition. Her uncle is Stanley Buckle and Neville is now so rich and famous he can provide a helicopter for them.

Each chapter heading is a song title and has a line drawing at the beginning that hints at the content. The chapters are of substantial length.  The novel is 204 pages long and uses blocked text with an adult font.    

This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

 

 

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2017 

This is a fast-paced novel where the stakes and the tension remain high. The young people, and in particular protagonist Catarina Agatta, take huge risks. They face pain and violence. Certainly here we come across Christopher Vogler’s ‘trials, allies and enemies’ or Joseph Campbell’s ‘road of ‘trials’ in their respective story theories.   

Emily Suvada presents us with a thoughtfully conceived world.  The story takes place as the planet is swept by a dangerous virus. Some people are secured in bunkers but this comes at a cost. 

People are coded and programmed like computers. Even DNA can be altered by the cleverest of the programmers such as Catarina’s father Lachlan Agatta. It’s difficult to understand this technology but Suvada herself has checked out her facts and indeed I’ve also run them past a scientist. A world like this can exist and probably will in the future. We’re heading that way already. That alone makes this book very readable. 

There is some sexual tension as well as Cat operates with three young men. This is not the main thrust of the story, however.

We can read this book on two levels. It can be taken at face value as a dystopian thriller or we can see the plague itself, its side effects and the way it is tackled as symbolic of society, even of our current society.  

A riddle is solved by the end of the book but we are straight away presented with another. Suvada leaves the way nicely open for the sequel.      
               

Being by Kevin Brooks

 

2007 

Fostered sixteen-year old Robert Smith goes for a routine endoscopy and things go badly wrong.

The novel is a car chase from the very beginning. Short sentences and frequent line-breaks maintain a fast pace. Kevin Brooks keeps us guessing all of the time. The pace slows later as the story turns to romance and sex. 

Robert tells his own story in a first person immediate narrative that as so often in books written for young adults makes the reader feel as though the narrator is their best friend and is telling their story in order to work what has happened. 

Is it a thriller? Is it a science fiction?  There is violence and Robert takes risks. There are also elements of the thriller in this novel.  

There is something odd about Robert and the reader is left to find her own explanation. 

The fast pace and the thriller elements in the first part of the story make it seem suitable for teens. 

The content in the latter half of the book brings it more firmly into the YA area.