Hit Squad
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
This is Mickey's first year at Grandview High. After transferring, all he wants to do is keep his head down, work hard and fit in with the upscale crowd. He is approached, because of his tough reputation, to join a group of students to take back the school from the bullies. Mickey finds himself caught up in a shadowy world of violence and retribution. When their planned payback goes horribly wrong, Mickey is forced to acknowledge the thin line between victim and victimizer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Part of the new Orca Soundings series of stylish-looking paperbacks designed to attract reluctant teen readers, this title presents what sounds like an edgy premise in language geared to a third-grade reading level. As Heneghan's (Waiting for Sarah) story opens, rich, blonde and beautiful Birgit, who has eyes "like ice," is assaulted by three girls. Birgit assembles a small team of misfits who are equally fed up with the out-of-control bullying at their school, and leads them to kidnap her tormenters, cut their hair and dump paint on their heads. Then it's on to the racist bullies who put a boy in the hospital. The characters themselves are little more than props in a rushed morality lecture. The main character, Mickey, is the most robust; a former gang member who has grown tired of using his fists, he reluctantly joins the action and even more reluctantly involves his mentally ill roommate. Heneghan poses serious questions about bullying and violence among young people, then unfortunately sidesteps them all, with a concluding clich ("Seems to me your so-called Hit Squad is just as bad as the bullies you're out to get," says one of Mickey's friends). Ages 12-up. FYI: The other titles in the Orca Soundings series being released this month: Fastback Beach by Shirlee Smith Matheson (-267-6); Tough Trails by Irene Morck (-271-4); Truth by Tanya Lloyd Kyi (-265-X).
