Trackers Bk1

Patrick Carman (author)

Scholastic Press, New York, USA: Australian release August 2010; 214pp

ISBN: 9780545165006

Genre: adventure

Issues: ethics, friendship, gifted, privacy

Adam Henderson is not your average high schooler. He's spent his childhood pulling computers apart both as a hobby and to help his father's business. In fact he's gone beyond pulling them apart. Adam uses his considerable ingenuity to design communication tools, surveillance cameras, computer programmes – anything to support his passion. Adam is a Tracker.

Adam, Finn, Emily and Lewis are a team. Each has their own particular strengths and weaknesses but Adam is the main brains behind almost everything they do. Until recently it's been for fun – to push the technological limits, to challenge themselves in ways that school simply fails to do. But then Adam's Vault, his workshop, is hacked and all his designs are stolen. Can the Tracker Team catch the culprits?

What has previously been a game suddenly becomes deadly earnest as the friends realise that far more is at stake than Adam's cool techno-gadgets. It seems the Trackers are up against the greatest Hacker of all time – someone for whom the Internet is simply the back door to immense – and illegal – power and wealth.

Written as interview transcriptions, the narrative details and incredibly accurate recall of conversations is justified very early on by the claim that Adam has a 'videographic' memory – that everything he sees and hears can be recalled at will. Swallowing this slightly unbelievable idea is essential to the reader's enjoyment so it's best to go with it as suspension of disbelief allows the narrative to sweep the reader along with its cleverly constructed, tightly woven plot. Structured rather like a video game, where the interviewer (i.e the reader) is gradually given greater and greater access to information and new codes, gadgets and puzzles, Trackers encourages interactivity with weblinks and appendices that enable readers to engage actively with text and characters.

Smoothly crafted, action-packed and entertaining, Trackers is the first in what promises to be a highly successful series that will particularly appeal to boys but is accessible to all readers.