Member Review

Dead Straight Line
By Malcolm Duffy
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Brilliantly written and beautifully debated prize-winning Malcolm Duffy explores the life-changing results of a single risky action in a school gang game gone wrong.

Sixteen-year-old Rory is a rule-breaker, a risk taker, a troublemaker and he is head of the gang. As a result of boredom, he comes up with his own game called Dead Straight Line. A simple idea – to get home in a dead straight line.
It doesn’t matter what’s in your way, gardens, locked gates or parks, high fences or brick walls, trespassing is the only way! And to be in Rory’s gang this is your chance to prove yourself.

But when Rory pressures his friend Eliot into playing, a serious accident is the result! And life changes for both boys.
Rory is blamed and shunned by his friends.
Both families suffer, physically and emotionally.
And friendships are tested as actions fuelled by anger are the results of each character’s pain.

When Rory’s school suggests helping out a care home, he’s uninterested and unimpressed. But after being paired up with Tanker, an eighty-year-old Geordie military veteran, who fought in the Falklands War, things slowly begin to change.
Opening up to a stranger helps Rory to see options.
Talking out his feelings helps him to understand himself and others.
And giving opportunities a chance can have an impact on more than just yourself.

A brilliant middle grade story full of teenager thrills and risks alongside plot twists.
Life throw’s challenges at us but it is the path you choose that paves the way.
Life isn’t easy growing up.
It is never a straight line.
But there is always a way.

Thank you Malcolm Duffy for creating beautiful layers of empathy when only darkness can be felt. We all NEED to know that there is ALWAYS a way.

Joanne Bardgett - teacher of littlies, lover of Children’s literature.
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