Dave Jenkinson (Canadian Children’s Book News, Spring 2004 (Vol. 27, No. 2))
In McNamee's fourth novel, he returns to the older teen audience of Hate You while writing from a male's perspective as he did in his mid-elementary grade books, Nothing Wrong with a Three-Legged Dog and Sparks. Almost a year after failing to save a drowning girl at a beach, seventeen-year-old Duncan still experiences strong feelings of guilt and has recurring nightmares. A summer job places him in the Toronto Transit Commission's Lost and Found department where, while killing time, he opens one of the many lost books. The plain leather-covered volume turns out to be the anonymous diary of a disturbed individual whose crimes Duncan recognizes as increasing in their severity. Initially, this person, whom Duncan labels Roach, had tortured and killed small animals and committed acts of arson, but his more recent adult writing indicates "Need something BIGGER" and describes three young women he has been stalking on the subway. Convinced that Roach intends to kill one of these women, Duncan perceives this as his opportunity to atone for his previous failure at saving a life. Research at the public library confirms Duncan's fears; Roach's escalation in destructive behaviour is called "acceleration" by serial killer profilers. Duncan, assisted by his friend Vinnie, tries unsuccessfully to ascertain Roach's identity, but then Roach appears at the TTC's Lost and Found seeking his missing diary and Duncan "just" has to follow him home - an act that almost costs him his life. "It's like the Hardy Boys meet Hannibal Lecter" is Vinnie's apt characterization of what he and Duncan attempt to do, but, unlike the actions of Frank and Joe, those of Vinnie and Duncan are always believable. By including sections from the diary, McNamee also provides unsettling glimpses into Roach's twisted psyche. As the title intimates, the book's pace increases to the point where, as Duncan goes down into Roach's basement, readers, even reluctant males, won't be able to turn the pages fast enough. Grades 8 and up. 2003., Random House of Canada, (hc) $23.95 and (lb) $26.99. Ages 13 up.

Joanne Peters (CM Magazine, April 23, 2004 (Vol. X, No. 17))
Duncan, a natural-born swimmer, completely in his element, is at Kayuga Beach, Lake Ontario. Testing his ability to stay under water, he submerges, returns to the surface and hears "a girl screaming in the water, probably getting splashed or playing tag. Girls are always screaming – at the beach, in school, on MTV." But, the screaming goes on, and when Duncan comes up from the next plunge, he sees a girl drowning, her eyes "blind with fear." Swimming out to save her, he sees her terrible life and death struggle. And then, he wakes up, remembering the girl he could not save. Now, for another nightmare. "Working at the Toronto Transit Commission's lost and found. Nine to five. Monday to Friday. A little slice of death, one day at a time. For me, it's a two-month sentence, July and August. I would have been happy bumming around until September but Dad called in a favor to get me in here. And at least I don't have to wear a uniform like my bud Wayne over at the Dairy Barn.... So I'm here under protest, a political prisoner of the capitalist overlord otherwise known as Dad. " And it's here, amongst the lost umbrellas, cell phones, and eyeglasses that Duncan, 17, finds a book -- a journal actually -- filled with crabbed writing listing the boiling points of various liquids, strange doodles of all different kinds of eyes, coded information, old newspaper clippings detailing the grisly torture and deaths of various animals. He realizes that "this is some sick nut's little diary." With plenty of slack time at the TTC lost and found, and his elderly supervisor, whiling away the hours reading the paper or listening to ball games on his pocket radio, Duncan is drawn back to the diary. Reading further, he realizes that the diary's author is pursuing bigger quarry than mice and family pets: "Been hunting. Riding the subway, searching the faces for the right one. All the pretty ladies sitting across from me. It's like an audition. A cattle call. " The writer – Duncan nicknames him "Roach" -- is a stalker, and he will kill again. Finding him becomes Duncan's mission, because this time, he will change something: he will save Roach's intended victim. With his buddies Wayne (the Dairy Barn wage slave and minor league delinquent) and Vinny (born with a deformed hand and capable of inventing brilliant stories to explain his disability), they stalk the stalker, even though Vinny states that "Me and you going after this guy, ... it's like the Hardy Boys meet Hannibal Lecter." I'm not going to tell you how it all ends, but I will tell you that this book kept me turning the pages in a way that few young adult novels have. The writing is, by turns, suspenseful, brilliant and witty – and I was actually sore from laughing at descriptions like "if you think of a half-deflated soccer ball with two of the hairiest ears you've ever seen attached to it, you've got a good picture of Jacob" (Duncan's supervisor at the TTC lost and found). Humour in a young adult novel is important. Equally important are well-drawn male characters – there just isn't enough fiction like this to get guys reading. Duncan, Vinny and Wayne are high-school guys living in any urban working-class neighbourhood, and their parents are average Canadians straight out of a Tim Horton's commercial. And the mystery behind this story is as compelling as any of the true crime shows so currently popular on television. You believe this story, and you care about these characters. Acceleration pulls you along and gathers speed just as an accelerant in a fire speeds up combustion. Read it, buy it, and recommend it, especially to your reluctant male readers. Some of the language can be a bit sophisticated, but it's a book definitely worth persevering. Let's hope that McNamee's publisher gets it into paperback format soon, and keeps the edgy cover art, as well. Highly Recommended. Rating: **** /4. Grades 9 and up. 2003, Wendy Lamb Books (Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd.), 210 pp., cloth, $23.95. Ages 14 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2003 (Vol. 71, No. 18))
Seventeen-year-old Duncan hates his summer job in the lost-and-found department of the Toronto Transit Commission. In his office below the subway tunnels, Duncan sorts through and retrieves items lost on buses and trains: a golf club, sunglasses, giant thong underwear, umbrellas, and cell phones. When he looks through a lost diary and finds a would-be murderer's plans for his first victim, he decides to hunt him down. Having failed recently in an attempt to save a drowning girl, he sees this as a chance to redeem himself and stop his nightmares. Enlisting his wise-guy friends, Vinny and Wayne, he stalks the stalker and finds himself in over his head. The creepy, morgue-like setting and the friendship among the teenaged boys are well-drawn, with a fair amount of humor to balance the chills. Though readers may wonder why Duncan fails to consider certain obvious points along the way, this is a well-written, read-it-in-one-gulp thriller. 2003, Wendy Lamb/Random, $15.95. Category: Fiction. Ages 12 up. © 2003 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, January 2004 (Vol. 38, No. 1))
The dramatic cover of a young man's eyes staring ahead will grab potential readers for this thriller, set in Toronto. It is written by the author of Hate You, which was an ALA Best Book for YAs. The narrator is haunted by the events of a previous summer when he failed to rescue a drowning girl; this summer he has a boring job in the bowels of the Toronto subway system working in the lost and found department. He can keep busy sorting through the items and reading the left-behind books--and it is a journal he finds that starts this action. The journal records the horrors of a sadistic person who tortures animals and stalks women. The narrator, Duncan, decides to try to discover the identity of this monster to stop him, and the chase begins. The action is exciting and believable. Duncan's friends are also believable: from the quote on the back of the book, "Me and you going after this guy," Vinny says, "it's like the Hardy Boys meet Hannibal Lecter." High school students won't find this too tame. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JS--Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2003, Random House/Wendy Lamb Books, 210p., $15.95. Ages 12 to 18.

Karen Coats (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, November 2003 (Vol. 57, No. 3))
Duncan is sweating his way through a sweltering Toronto summer, trapped during working hours in the subterranean world of the subway lost-and-found office. Desperate for some reading material to pass the time, he happens upon a small leather-bound journal (“with a cover that feels like skin”) that turns out to be the chronicle of a demented individual involved in the ghastly process of what police and FBI profilers call “acceleration,” or the “escalation of increasingly destructive aberrant behavior.” The diary includes graphs of how long it takes mice to drown in various fluids, newspaper articles of neighborhood pet dismemberments, plans for burning down buildings with newspaper clippings that confirm their success, and worst of all, detailed profiles of three women whom the creep is considering for his first actual human victim. At first, Duncan decides to ignore his find, but then he wonders whether it might offer him a chance for redemption. Earlier in the year he had failed to save a girl from drowning; haunted by her memory, he muses that saving the killer’s intended victims might atone for his inability to save her. Duncan’s first-person narration is wry and understated, and his motivation is clearly situated in that oft-explored yet seldom mapped territory of guy country. As his father explains, “it doesn’t go away--that thing, the belief or whatever, that one day you’re going to be a hero. All guys think that.” Though the atonement angle is a tad contrived and the acceleration detailed in the diary is a bit too textbook to be entirely plausible, the action of the book will make the acceleration of the reader’s heartbeat all too real. It’s a fast-paced read with a satisfying payoff, especially gratifying for reluctant readers with a taste for suspense. (Reviewed from galleys) Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2003, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2003, Lamb, 176p, $17.99 and $15.95. Grades 7-10.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2004)
Working in the lost-and-found department of Toronto's subway system, teenage Duncan stumbles upon a diary in which a man reveals he is stalking a woman and plans to kill her. Duncan himself has a guilty secret--his failure to save a girl from drowning--that propels him to become personally involved in preventing the murder. Written with mounting tension and suspense, the fast-paced novel is hard to put down. Category: Older Fiction. 2003, Random/Lamb, 213pp, $15.95, $17.99. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 3: Recommended, satisfactory in style, content, and/or illustration.

Ruth E. Cox (VOYA, December 2003 (Vol. 26, No. 5))
McNamee, author of Hate You (Delacorte, 1999/VOYA April 1999), pulls no punches in this thriller that moves as fast as trains thundering above the Toronto Transit Commission's lost and found, where seventeen-year-old Duncan finds the journal of a psychopathic killer who is stalking female victims on the subway. At first Duncan just wants to get rid of it, even tries giving it to the police, but he decides that stopping this guy might redeem him from his guilt over not saving a drowning victim the summer before. Duncan and his physically handicapped friend, Vinny, research serial killers at the library. They certainly do not expect the killer, whom they call "Roach," to show up looking for his journal, but he does. Duncan follows Roach home, and then calls his "light-fingered" friend, Wayne, to help him break into the killer's house while he is gone. When Roach finds Duncan in his basement, Duncan escapes only to be caught at the subway station and thrown onto the tracks. In a final attempt to save himself and the girls, Duncan rolls under the platform ledge and grabs Roach's leg, toppling him in front of the oncoming train. While in the hospital with multiple head wounds, Duncan fakes amnesia when police question him about the dead guy. Only Duncan and his buddies know that they stopped a serial killer and released Duncan from his nightmares. This novel will intrigue Silence of the Lamb fans, but McNamee offers much more. The dark symbolism surrounding the subway and the rich character development are as intoxicating as the adrenalin rush. VOYA CODES: 5Q 5P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Every YA (who reads) was dying to read it yesterday; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Random House, 176p., $15.95 and PLB $17.99. Ages 12 to 18.