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Photo Finish
Matthew Reilly
New York, N.Y. : Aladdin Paperbacks, 2007
Call No.: Y English REI

It’s a story with the usual suspects: teen prodigy, sabotage, a hero who will let nothing get in the way of him, and random parts about the pretty girl who sends hearts afire (and who of course is the hero’s friend).

It’s a cliché formula, but how it’s pieced together is what makes the difference.

Reilly’s strength is the thrills and spills in his stories, right from the beginning. Photo Finish is preceded by Crash Course and Full Throttle in the Hover Car Race series. It opens with a terrible car crash where the cars plunge into water. Our star hero, Jason, grabs his brother out of his car and ejects into the water, while above their heads, their cars explode. Imagine rockets and torpedoes!

The Hover Car Race concept itself is also attractive. These Hover Cars are like hybrids of cars and Stealth Fighters, and the race terrain is not your usual tarred roads, but landscapes of buildings and even ice bergs. Just imagine flying machines weaving in and out of narrow spaces between edifices, zooming at top-gun speed to race to the finish line.

Reilly has clearly thought out the mechanics of his Hover Car Race championships too, creating the kind of score-keeping that happens in real life sports like Formula One and soccer. The race is serious business too, and these teens even have an International Race School to attend.

In this third book Photo Finish, a mysterious coalition is using dirty tricks to hamper Jason’s advance, literally trying to bump him out of the races. The ‘incidents’ that happen are no coincidence, and neither are they small matters. Jason’s confidence is jolted, but he regains it by learning to race from the basics again.

Thrill-seekers will be drawn to this fast-paced coming-of-age novel. If you enjoyed the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer (2008), this will whet your thirst for adrenaline-pumping action as well.