Dead Straight Line

This compelling book, based on the author’s childhood experiences and researched with Combat Stress and the Spinal Injuries Association is a very welcome addition to the canon of Young Adult fiction. 16-year-old Rory is a habitual rule breaker and addicted to risk: trouble- making runs in his veins. His four like-minded friends are in thrall to him and he revels both in the sense of power and inventing new and ever more dangerous challenges for them all.

When Rory’s girlfriend Lauren asks if her brother Eliot can join the gang he makes sure that Eliot knows that participation in all activities is obligatory. He proves to be reticent so Rory forces him to play Dead Straight Line-taking a route which must remain perfectly straight, despite any obstacles which have to be crossed. During the game Eliot jumps from a conservatory roof, landing on a pile of rubble hidden from sight and is paralysed for life from the waist down at the age of 14. Always the model son and student, he seeks to mitigate his own role in his injuries by saying that Rory pushed him off the roof when he refused to jump.

Following the accident and Eliot’s lie, Rory is subjected to the righteous anger of those on social media, his parents’ lack of trust in him, his friends’ desertion and his girlfriend’s hatred. His home is attacked, the family car vandalised and a garden shed containing fuel is burned to the ground in an explosion. He is compelled to change schools and has lost the fabric of his life-all as a result of one foolish decision, one accident waiting to happen. Duffy presents the reader with a series of thought-provoking questions in this narrative which explore the culture of teenage boys, the nature of family life, of trust and of consequences.

Rory is brought to his lowest ebb and when a teacher suggests that he might like to do some good in the community and join the group which visits a care home in order to read to the elderly residents he reluctantly agrees to participate. And it is in this unlikely setting that he meets Tanker, a Geordie Army veteran whose PTSD ruined his marriage and his life, and whose diabetes decimated his body. This formidable character – whose accent Duffy renders impeccably – leads Rory to an acceptance of his situation and the responsibilities which it brings. Their relationship is pitch-perfect, free of sentimentality and condescension, delivering hard truths with compassion, being completely honest. Tanker springs out of the page.

Rory finds his redemption, Eliot his peace and Duffy avoids the neatly tied up ending with complete success. The two boys come honestly and openly together to respond to a request to stop the viral spread of Dead Straight Line on social media, agreeing to speak in schools to warn their peers of the dangers of taking extreme risks without thinking of the possible consequences. When Eliot publicly admits his lie, the rift between the boys is healed and their continued appearances in schools reduces the numbers of participants in Dead Straight Line. Rory is still haunted by guilt but is on the road to redemption and he has come to realise that life is ‘never a dead straight line’ but a series of challenges in which truth must always be on his side.