Framed

The bleak novel, written in the style and spirit of the late Robert Cormier, describes how 15-year-old Jude is imprisoned on a trumped up drugs conviction on the evidence of someone he regarded as his particular friend. It works very well at that paranoid level where all plot inconsistencies come to seem less important than discovering whether Jude will ever finally see justice done. The account of how he survives five years in a brutal American jail makes for tough reading. No one could object to this as such, but there are other problems too. Jude himself is too glum a hero, reminiscent of those unsmiling actors who once used to star in black and white supporting feature films about similar sorts of injustice visited upon the innocent and unwary. But there is still enough here to satisfy the most angst-ridden of adolescent readers out for a really gloomy read before its final, almost happy ending.