This young adult suspense novel was really creepy—but in a good way. That is, if creepy can be good . . .
Danny is a fourteen-year-old boy with some larger than average problems. A gang at his school, known as the Outlaws, has targeted him. He witnessed a mugging and turned the attacker in, not knowing he was the brother of one of the Outlaws, and they have vowed to make him pay. And when they say “pay,” they really mean it – these boys have committed assault and battery on many of the kids at school.
Tired of being cooped up in his San Francisco apartment, Danny decides to go down to Fisherman’s Wharf. The gang would never look for him there, right? Well, they weren’t looking for him, but they found him anyway. Turns out that even gangs like to sightsee. In an attempt to ditch them, Danny hops a boat headed out for Alcatraz Island, pretty sure they didn’t see him – but then they wave to him from shore. They know where he is.
The tour of Alcatraz is cool, but freaky. Danny has a personal tie-in to jails – his father died in a prison camp run by terrorists, and he can’t help but wonder if his father’s camp was anything like this. He shudders when he thinks of the men who were incarcerated in Alcatraz, especially in solitary, a dark, dank cell with little air. It was horrible.
Danny thinks he’ll be able to shake the Outlaws when he gets back to the mainland, but then they come over to the island. They start looking everywhere, and Danny knows he’s going to have to get very clever in order to survive.
An edge-of-the-seat thriller, your teen will love “Someone’s Hiding on Alcatraz Island.” And they don’t need to know that they’re learning about the prison while they’re reading.
(This book was published in 1984 by Houghton Mifflin.)
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