A 2013 novel by Kevin Brooks. Told in the form of Linus's diary after he abducted by a mysterious man and held in an underground bunker, where he is being watched at all times. It won the 2014 Carnegie Medal, becoming very controversial as a result and being challenged by multiple libraries.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Fred does this to Bird. When getting him off of Jenny, Fred headbutts him, which knocked him down to the floor. This turned out to have been fatal to Bird.
- Ambiguous Situation: One day, the power to the bunker is cut off, leaving the remaining captives to slowly die. They never find out if the kidnapper died and was unable to look over the bunker, or if he just simply gave up on this game.
- Arc Number: Six, something that Linus is quick to notice. He notes that around the bunker there are six bedrooms, six beds, six notebooks, six chairs near a table, and six bowls to eat from. Linus deduces from these observations that there are six victims that the kidnapper is gathering to be placed in the bunker. He turns out to be right.
- Argument of Contradictions: Jenny and Fred have one late in the book when he claims that he and her are animals, to which she says they're not.
- Beware of Vicious Dog: After yet another failed escape attempt, a punishment that the kidnapper sets upon the captives is sending down a ferocious Dobermann. Linus notes that of all the mean dogs that he's encountered before, none of them scared him like this one. The dog attacked Bird, take a big bite out of him, until Fred wrestled the dog and strangled it.
- Bottle Episode: The whole book takes place in the small, secluded bunker beneath the ground. Linus starts the diary off with him recounting how he woke up in there, and any events told that take place outside are just flashbacks that he recalls.
- Bound and Gagged: This is how Fred arrives in the bunk via the lift. It takes the prisoners whom have arrived so far to free him.
- Car Fu: According to Fred, this was part of how he was kidnapped. He was in the outskirts of London trying to get home, when a van passed by, and he tried to hitch a ride. Instead, the van drove into him, knocking him in a ditch. He was then dragged into, along with being beaten, into the van.
- Contrived Clumsiness: As part of a scheme to get the group out of the bunker, Jenny "accidentally" knocks over a frying pan, spilling bacon fat onto the cooker.
- Covered in Scars: Linus notices that Fred has plenty of scars all over his chest and back, along with tattoos.
- Cut-and-Paste Note: The kidnapper sends a few notes to the group telling them that if one of them can kill another of the group, then that person may be free.
- Defector from Decadence: Linus's father is a famous and wealthy comic book author, while Linus himself ran away from school and lives on the streets.
- Denied Food as Punishment: The captives are constantly subjected to this whenever they attempt to escape.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Jenny dies in Linus's arms.
- Disaster Dominoes: What finally does the rest of the team in. First, the power goes out, which cuts off the heat and lights. Second, Linus gets a sudden insane thirst, and decides to drink tap water, which he realizes too late is draining up all the water supply. Third, Fred flushes the toilet, which sucks up any of the water left.
- Downer Ending: All of the captives slowly lose their lives, until it's just Linus, alone and delirious in the dark without any food nor water. He then is all but stated to abruptly die as he is making another entry.
- Driven to Suicide: Russell. He took his glass eye out, smashed it on the floor, and slit his wrists with one of the shards.
- Dwindling Party: All six of the characters present in the book die one by one. Anja is strangled by an unknown member of the group (most likely Bird), Bird himself starts to die from a deadly dog bite and is then finished off by a knock to the head from Fred, Russell takes his own life graphically by his own instrument, Fred drinks bleach and accidentally poisons himself, Jenny dies from starvation and dehydration, and Linus is implied to die that way as well.
- Exact Words: When explaining to Jenny that Russell died, Linus tells her that he lost his life and had cancer. He notes that he didn't tell her everything, but he didn't lie.
- Eye Scream: The first time Linus tries to mess with one of the grilles (the devices that are present in each room to spy on the captives as well as attack them if they lash out), he gets squirted by a pungent spray, which burned his eyes and made him scream in pain. According to Jenny, his eyes then became red and puffy.
- Faux Horrific: Linus notices that the only book that is available to read in the bunker is the Bible, which he is absolutely against reading because of his atheism. Even when he is constantly bored, he refuses to read it, saying he's not that bored.
- Foreshadowing: Linus notes that, after he slapped Bird across the face, that he should have done better. He should have headbutted him because, by doing this, it would have created a lasting impact. Indeed, Fred does this very technique that kills Bird.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: How Russell marks his final entry in his journal before offing himself. It's addressed to Linus, and then there is illegible writing that Linus cannot decipher, and then it ends with, "I'm going to sleep."
- Good News, Bad News: Linus starts off one diary entry with this trope. The good news was that the captives suddenly have a large skewer of meat after they had been starving for a while. The bad news was that next to the meat were the latest escape plans that the group had brainstormed that the kidnapper clearly found out about.
- I Can Explain: Anja blurts this out when Linus finds the food that she's been hoarding.
- I Know You're Watching Me: The prisoners constantly do this towards the grilles. Not only that, but Linus also at times writes down prompts which involve speaking directly toward the kidnapper that he knows he's reading this (which he probably has).
- I'm a Humanitarian: Being driven mad by hunger, Linus eats Jenny's dead body, which causes him to live a few days longer than expected.
- Impersonating an Officer: How Jenny got abducted. She was on a field trip to a nuclear power plant, when the kidnapper appeared to her dressed as a cop, telling her that her mother needed help. He then took Jenny away.
- Instant Sedation: How the kidnapper knocks out most of the victims, except for Fred.
- Ironic Echo: Linus is disgusted by Frank's defence of keeping the dog's dead body to eat it, that it's "just meat". Linus either eats or tries to eat Jenny's body after her death, reasoning to himself that it's all just meat.
- Kill the Lights: The lights in the bunker are not only frequently turned off at midnight, but they can also be shut down in periods of time as a form of punishment in response to any attempts at resistance from the captives. And when the mastermind seems to be gone, the lights go out yet again, and do not turn back on. A match that Fred had kept is now the only source of lighting at this point.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Linus is helping the man across the street when he gets kidnapped.
- One-Book Author: In-Universe, Linus's father. He wanted to do plenty of arts such as cartoons, graphic novels, and CGI tests, but what he only managed to accomplish doing was a children's comic strip. It had little to no impact in the UK, yet was an insane hit over in Japan. He grew to despise his work for this reason.
- Sanity Slippage: The entire group of captives suffer from this except for Jenny.
- Shady Real Estate Agent: Anja is an unlikeable, selfish real estate agent, seeming to lie (although the actual truth is not revealed so it's left ambiguous) and hiding food from the others when they're all starving to death
- Shout-Out: With Anja, the kidnapper called himself Mr Fowles.
- Sinister Surveillance: The captives are all being watched by the kidnapper. He does this by installing grilles in each room, which are each equipped with a microphone and a camera. It views everything the prisoners do.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: As part of their punishment for their first attempt at escaping the bunker, the kidnapper sends them a large amount of food down to them, while they were starving from lack of it. It turns out to have been drugged, which makes them go sick and crazy, as indicated by Linus's sudden insane writing in the diary.
- That Came Out Wrong: When complaining to Russell about his classmates back in boarding school, Linus brings up how one of the insults they had for him is that they assumed he was gay. He then remembered that he was talking to a man who is gay. Luckily, Russell doesn't take offense to that at all.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: Most of the captives often act like this whenever they get their hands on delivered food after long periods of not getting any.
- Use Your Head: How Fred takes out Bird.
- Women's Mysteries: Linus once catches Jenny going to Anja's room, and he asked her what she was doing in there. Jenny looked embarrassed, blushed, and replied that she wanted to ask Anja about a "girl thing". Linus doesn't delve much further into this subject.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Linus is tricked by his kidnapper who pretends to be blind and has his arm in a sling.
