Bernard Beckett: Jolt

By MARGIE THOMSON

This book has it all: the dark, claustrophobic New Zealand bush, a catastrophic earthquake, the aggressive vulnerability of teenagerhood and teenager social relationships, spooky psycho-thriller-type abduction, an evil doctor with psychotic drugs at his fingertips ... and the overarching certainty that decisions made, whether right or wrong, will affect your life for ever.

Marko, a difficult, diffident, flawed "hero," awakes out of a drug-induced sleep into a living nightmare: hidden from the world, he now resides in a psychiatric ward presided over by a mysterious doctor (whom Marko recognises with horror, but whose real nature it is the job of the book to slowly reveal) who Marko knows wants to kill him. Whom can he trust, and how did he get there?

Secretly, he begins to write his story: about a school tramping trip gone horribly wrong, of murder, and terrifying pursuits through the mountains and river valleys of the Tararua Ranges and also, redemptively, of unlikely friendships forged through mutual need.

This is a great teenage thriller - one of the best New Zealand kidult books I've read - and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Longacre

$16.95