The Treatment by C.L. Taylor: Review

Name of the book: The Treatment

Author: C.L. Taylor (Cally Taylor)

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 297

Price 7.99 pounds

“I can hear Mouse’s raggedy breathing and heavy footsteps behind me as she follows me down, down, down into the bowels of Norton House,” – surely sends a chill down the spine! And, this is not the only instance when the writer creates a moment that makes you “jump out of your skin”, there are several such across The Treatment, a gripping mystery by C.L. Taylor. Taylor is an award-winning author, known for her adult psychological thrillers. The Accident, The Lie and The Escape are some of her best sellers.

The Treatment is meant particularly for high school teenagers, stepping into adulthood. Taylor underscores the nuances of adolescent psychology while sketching a pulsating mystery. She picturizes how a reform-system that has gone wrong due to malpractices of educators, hand-in-glove with law makers, can affect future generations.

Taylor draws our attention to Residential Reform Academy (RRA) where teens excluded from school due to behavioral flaws are admitted for remedial therapy. The therapy shockingly turns out to be a torturous ‘brainwashing treatment’, which is unraveled in the book. Evidently much research on the UK government’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) aside from psychology of growing adults, has gone behind the story.

Drew Finch a 16-year-old high-school girl is the lead character, who drives the investigation into the RRA single handedly. She will remind every present and past ‘young adult’ of Nancy Drew, a fictional American teenaged sleuth character created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer decades ago. Anonymous writers collectively named Carolyn Keene wrote the popular mystery series. Just like Nancy Drew, Drew Finch is aware of several tenets in psychology, thanks to her father, and can connect several dots when comes to solving a knotted mystery. However, Finch is a novice, her risks are far more serious than she can imagine.

Drew misses her dad, David Finch, a psychologist, whose sudden disappearance has unsettled her. And, she is not easy with her step-dad Tony Coleman, the National Head of Academies. She is also finding it difficult with some of her school mates, who mean harm to her. Thoughts and contemplations are crowding her mind when she realizes that she is being followed. Drew realizes that the follower is a stranger, later revealed as Dr Rebecca Cobey. She shoves a note into her pocket, which read – “Help me, Drew! We’re not being reformed, we’re being brain washed,” – an alarm from her 15-year-old brother Mason, who is at the RRA, Norton House, in Northumberland, North East England. The mystery behind the note deepens when Drew tries to find out more about Cobey and lays her hands on one Zed Green, a girl who drops clues to Drew about ‘the treatment’ at Norton House

After meeting Zed, Drew’s desperate bid to save her brother, lands her at the academy. Every moment she spends there is filled with thrill and suspense. Any thriller story lover would not like to miss a single move that Drew makes inside the academy to reach Mason. Her encounters with the staff, called ‘friends’ and of course Mrs H and Dr Rothwell, the key officials, are a visual pleasure. Taylor has painted every character differently and presented every situation with graphic details, lending immense colour and vibrancy to the story.

Drew takes every possible risk to prevent her brother’s ‘treatment’, and while doing so, she makes friends with asthmatic Mouse (Megan), and rebellious Israel. Also, she finds a foe in Jude, a sneaky roommate. The sequence of events, bringing in new characters with their limitations are calculated and measured. How Drew manages and deals with these hurdles, along with her failures, her ‘treatment’ is all that comprises the unfolding of the mystery. There are a couple of surprises on the way for her as well. For instance, the coming in of Lacey, a school rival, into the academy and the discovery of her lost father in the RRA staff quarters.

It is worth a note that Taylor uses interesting pseudonyms for her characters in the book. Drew uses the name ‘Zara Fox’, a character in her PS4 video game, to introduce herself to her room mates at RRA, and ‘Lone Voice’ on the internet to hide her identity. Some characters have also been compared to characters from other works of fiction, which teenaged readers can quickly identify.

Aside from the character details and situations, the stage of events, which is the academy itself, is immaculately drawn – the activity-sections, hallway, stairway, staff quarters, cinema, sanatorium, the treatment centre and likewise. Taylor’s understanding of the facts in psychology, her knowledge of digital medium, and most of all perception of conditions are quite insightful. Despite its imperfections, The Treatment can be recommended to all age groups.