Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ Cut Off at the Throat: Mystery, Murder and Survival on a Dystopian Island

Cut Off at the Throat: Mystery, Murder and Survival on a Dystopian Island
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By: Oisín McGann
Publisher: Oisin McGann
Published: August 2024
Pages: 283
Categories: Young Adult/Teen
Language: English
Available as: Paperback
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781068754500

On an isolated island in the middle of the Atlantic, the building known as the monastery is destroyed in an explosion. The building served as the headquarters and school building for a community made up of sixteen privileged teenagers and the twenty-eight adult guardians, members of the Neutral Order, led by the resolute Brother Buckley. Their satellite link with the mainland has recently, and mysteriously, failed. Their supply ship is weeks late. When the monastery is destroyed, all their remaining food stores go up with it, along with the island’s communications hub and back-up radio.

Like Billy, every student has one of these chips implanted in their brains. Its main purpose is to control what the teenagers can and can’t talk about. One of the things they can’t talk about is why they’re all on the island. Because Billy’s language is controlled by her chip, she can’t tell the reader anything that she’s forbidden to speak about. As it becomes clear that there is a saboteur amongst them, it’s assumed it’s because of the students’ purpose on the island. Suspicion leads to rising tensions between the teenagers and their guardians, all of whom are former soldiers – war veterans. The number of banned topics, and the control over the students’ speech, gradually increases.

As Brother Buckley’s investigation to find the saboteur progresses, we learn more about the island’s strange purpose. With most of their food destroyed, the community is forced to hunt, forage, plant crops and fish until help arrives from outside. But the weather is against them and they are ill-equipped, lack fundamental skills, and there are few natural resources on or around the island. Slowly, they begin to starve. The frightened teenagers are wondering why their parents have not sent help. What is happening in the outside world?

As order begins to break down, Billy and her friend Skip carry out their own investigation to uncover the identity of the saboteur. They get ever close to the truth, even as we learn the community’s purpose . . . though it may all have come too late.

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