The Detainee

The Detainee is the first book in a trilogy. For once, this is a dystopian novel written for adults rather than a dumbed-down YA title. This allows the reader into a much darker world where more “horrific” events can be discussed or described. Except this is a first-person narrative and our sixty-three year old hero is not that informative. We only get brief highlights of how the “world” got into this mess. It seems to have begun with a major financial meltdown. Those in power decided they could not afford to “keep” too many scroungers around so the worthless are all sent off to camps.

We get to see life and death on an island where the emphasis is on death. This is literally a dumping ground for the unwanted and, within days of arriving, most of the older folk have given up and simply wait to die — a process that may be accelerated by the arrival of machete-waving killers whenever the mists come down. On balance, this is good but a lot is left unexplained. The hope is the trilogy will improve when the second book gives us a clearer view of the social context for these detention centers.