ACID

The question dogging Pass’s debut is, “Why?” Why has 17-year-old Jenna Strong an escapee from a maximum-security prison two years after being sentenced to life for murdering her parents? Why is she given an elaborate new identity by mysterious strangers and sent to hide in a squalid ghetto of 2113 London, now a police state? It’s a long time before these basic motivational questions are addressed. Meanwhile, Jenna becomes entangled with the son of the man who broke her out of prison, her cover goes wrong, and she winds up on the run from the agents of ACID—the Agency for Crime Investigation and Defense—the new masters of England. It’s a standard totalitarian dystopia fraught with the usual perils for a protagonist living outside the rules, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not particularly twisty or intriguing, either, and with no apparent rationale for the action, the book relies on readers’ genre expectations to carry the plot until some of the questions begin to be framed. Ages 14–up. Agent: Carolyn Whitaker, London Independent Books. (Mar.)