Andrew Smith (Ghost Medicine; In the Path of Falling Objects) once again proves his ability to penetrate complex psyches and mature themes within the framework of a spellbinding plot. Just days before 16-year-old narrator John ("Jack") Wynn Whitmore is to leave for a two-week trip to England with his best friend, Conner Kirk, Jack gets kidnapped. He blames himself: he gets drunk at a party at Conner's house, falls asleep on a park bench in Steckel Park, and accepts a ride from a doctor. The doctor, Freddie Horvath, drugs him, and Jack winds up bound to a bed in the man's house. After Freddie uses a stun gun on Jack and nearly rapes him, the teen begins to disassociate from himself, moving from a first-person narrative to third-person references: "Jack doesn't cry, though. Never has." A strange sound ("Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap") from beneath the bed leads Jack to discover a sharp spring that he uses to cut the bindings on his hands. Jack escapes physical confinement by page 31, but his mental imprisonment and his struggle to break free of it have just begun.
Jack confides the details of his kidnapping to Conner but refuses to go to the police ("What would they do, anyway? I'd just end up in trouble for being drunk and on drugs," Jack says). When Jack spies Freddie's Mercedes near Steckel Park, Conner seizes the chance for retribution. Freddie, however, catches them in the act of vandalizing his car, things spin out of control, and Freddie winds up dead. While Conner seems to take their self-determined act of justice in stride, Jack becomes even more distanced from himself. He arrives in London a few days ahead of Conner, and events grow even stranger. A man named Henry Hewitt follows Jack from his hotel to the Prince of Wales pub. He tells Jack he's known the teen for "a very long time.... Not from here, though, from Marbury." The stranger gives Jack a pair of glasses, and when Jack puts them on, they transport him to another world--Marbury. It's a world at war and ravaged by plague. Harvesters--zombie-like creatures with one black eye and one white eye who feed on human flesh--are tracking Jack and two half-brothers, Ben and Griffin. Jack begins to recognize people in Marbury as counterparts to those in his present-day world. He also learns that a ghost named Seth (marked by his signature sounds, "Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap") has been looking out for him, acting as Jack's escort between the two worlds. As Jack feels increasingly trapped by his secret, Marbury draws him back like a drug: "Being in Marbury was in some ways like being imprisoned by Freddie Horvath: I didn't have the time or energy to worry about what was real." Smith simultaneously demonstrates Jack's unraveling and the valiant efforts of his friends--both Conner and his new love interest, Nickie--to keep him afloat as he sorts through his conflicting feelings of guilt, anger and depression. While Seth's story does not feel as integral to the overall arc of the novel, Smith keeps the tension between Marbury and the present-day worlds as taut as the tightrope Jack walks. As readers, we feel the addictive pull of The Marbury Lens every bit as strongly as the hero does. Just try to put this book down.--Jennifer M. Brown