Lifers

Gr 8 Up—Alice has disappeared, and after reading her cryptic final message, best friend Preston is determined to find her. Clues from her notebook lead him to MIST (the Manchester Institute for Science and Technology), where he witnesses a boy's death and realizes that Alice is also in danger from a government conspiracy spearheaded by Christopher Armstrong, a member of Parliament elected on a law-and-order platform. But crime isn't exactly disappearing in Manchester; it's being forced underground. Preston will have to go "beyond the valve" before he can figure out how to rescue Alice, assuming, of course, that he'll be able to make it out alive himself. This urban sci-fi novel is short on details of how the valve actually works, and readers are left to accept that some kind of teleportation system has been built at great expense just to deport teen delinquents in a near-future, although not dystopian, England. Action and adventure abound in this thriller, although there's little in the way of character development. Some strong language makes this more suitable for older readers.