Thunder Road

Which street racer really controls the strip? An award-winning young adult novel full of fast cars, burn-offs, and an unwritten code of loyalty.

Thunder Road. You find it in any city after the cops are in bed. It's where street racers go to test their machines—and their nerve.

For me, it was the steep rising pitch of the turbo, the screaming tyres, and the curtain of white smoke hanging behind me: all the stuff that spells street racing.

Trace is 19 and has grown out of small-town ways. He's hungry for more. In Auckland, he hooks up with Devon, a guy with the Midas touch, who introduces Trace to burn-offs, big city style. Soon everything is smoking.

There is a code with drivers: you don't criticise and you don't show fear. When Trace falls for a girl even Devon says is out of his league, loyalties are stretched. Then Devon hits on a scheme for hauling in cash. Soon enough he and Trace find out who really controls the strip. As the underworld closes in, it looks like their friendship is heading for burn-out.

Menacing and suspenseful—a gripping novel from a remarkable talent which won the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards Young Adult Fiction category in 2004.