Andy Mulligan, Liquidator, David Fickling Books/Scholastic Australia, 1 Nov 2015, 392pp, $19.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781910200940
Liquidator is a thriller about a group of school students who discover a horrific cover-up through the work experience their school has organised for them. They include: Vicky who is working as an assistant sandwich maker; Edgar who is moving boxes at a gym; Leela who is working for a sinister surgeon who lets her assist in surgery; Ben who thinks he is going to do computer programming but ends up arranging flowers; Spud and Damien who are working as the emergency night squad in the sewers; Eleanor who is walking dogs; Michael who is working at a control centre; Polly and Molly who are working as journalists for a newspaper and KatKat who winds up singing with a famous pop star.
The chapters are dictated by the different characters as they describe the part they play in finding out and then protecting a small boy whose health has been destroyed by a new energy drink. The baddies are powerful and extremely dangerous but the students work together, pooling their skills, not only to save the child, but to survive themselves. Themes of honesty, teamwork, the rights of the individual and the dangers of too much power in the wrong hands are strongly conveyed, which is interesting because on his website Mulligan states that he can’t bear books ‘that set out to create liberal discussion of worthy topics’.
Mulligan’s writing style is teen-speak conversational with plenty of action and comedy which will appeal to the early-teenage audience Liquidator is aimed at. I did find the plot and the host of characters a little complicated to follow, though, and had to keep flicking back to previous chapters to check up on information that I had missed.
Reviewed by Katy Gerner