**This blog contains adult language.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Please do not continue to read if you don't want to know who the “bad guy” is.
From the Back of the Book: Death Train. Go-back, go-back, go-back...the steady sound of the train rushing over the tracks warns Hannah. She and her friends are on a trip that begins as a fun cross-country tour – until they learn what's on the train with them. A coffin. Frog's coffin. His real name was Roger. But from the day he started at Parker High to the day of his sudden and horrible death, he was taunted and ridiculed, cruelly nicknamed Frog by his classmates. One by one, Hannah's friends guiltily confess the nasty things they did to Frog. And then, one by one, they are viciously attacked. It seems Frog is out for revenge. But Frog's dead – isn't he?
💀💀TRIGGER WARNING: Wrath, do NOT read this recap. I'm not even kidding. If you don't listen to anything else I say, listen to this. DO NOT READ THIS.💀💀
This book was published in 1992 and this is my first time reading it. I'm pretty familiar with Hoh, though. Unfortunately. She wrote a ton of PH books back in the day and, for some reason, they've never been my favorites. Hoh annoys me. I guess we'll see how this one goes.
We begin with our protagonist Hannah getting ready to start out on a “teen tour from Chicago to San Francisco” by train. In the first two pages we get a huge number of characters dumped on us. I can already tell I'm going to remember none of them. First we have the ones Hannah considers losers: Caroline from geometry class, Eugene the thin, Dale the huge and Lolly the stocky. That's exactly how Hoh describes them so we're off to a great start. Apparently physical appearance is going to sub in for actual character traits here. Hannah can't figure out what the four of them are doing here because they aren't popular enough to be on this little trip. Bitch much, Hannah? We also meet the chaperones Ms Quick and Mr Dobbs who are somehow going to supervise 30 students across the country on their own.
#bullshit
That's a legal nightmare right there.
We also meet Hannah's friends: her boyfriend Mack the jock, clothes-obsessed Kerry and Kerry's boyfriend Lewis who gets no character description other than glasses and ginger hair.
Hannah is a little freaked out to be traveling by train. She thinks they move too fast and they aren't stable enough. I looked it up and trains are three times more dangerous than plane travel but WAY safer than traveling by car. I've always wanted to ride on a train but I don't think I'd like traveling on one clear across the country.
There's a brief snag because Kerry has packed a ridiculous “carry on” that she can barely lift. She tries to get Mack to carry it but he refuses, saying that's a boyfriend's job. Lewis gets stuck trying to manage it and ends up falling behind the others because he's struggling so much to carry it.
They get a tour of the train which doesn't really make Hannah feel any better. The corridors are very narrow and she's claustrophobic. The students aren't the only ones on board, which again seems like a legal nightmare when there aren't enough adults around to supervise and make sure the kids are safe in this close space with strangers. They're all staying two to a cabin. Kerry and Hannah are rooming together and I'm pretty sure Mack and Lewis are as well.
Lewis rejoins them without the bag. He tells Kerry that the conductor saw it and said it was too big to qualify as a carry on so it had to be taken to the baggage car. Kerry is pissed and throws a fit because all of her clothes and makeup are in there. She likes to change her clothes several times a day and she doesn't want to run to the baggage car and back each time. She tells Lewis to fix it but he says there's nothing he can do. He seems a little irritated with her and I can't blame him. It's not his fault she tried to sneak something by. Kerry stomps off, saying she's going to retrieve it herself.
The boys go off to find their sleeping compartment so they can get settled in. Hannah's just sitting around freaking herself out about train crashes when Kerry comes back looking shaken. She says there's a coffin in the baggage car. That definitely doesn't dispel Hannah's sense of dread any. She tries to convince herself that the coffin is empty and just being shipped but Kerry doesn't buy it when she says it aloud. Kerry says they need to go back to the baggage car to see if there's any kind of label on it that will tell them it's empty. Hannah doesn't want to go but Kerry isn't taking 'no' for an answer and Hannah clearly doesn't realize she has her own agency.
When they check it out, they find a tag identifying the body as Frederick Roger Drummond, otherwise known as Frog.
(((Author's Note: Frog is the name people used to bully him, and even though he wasn't the nicest of people, I'm not going to use it. I'm going to refer to him as Roger, which was his preferred name.)))
Hannah wonders if Lolly, Dale and Eugene know that Roger's body is on board. Lolly was his girlfriend and the other two were his only friends.
They track down Lewis and Mack in the dining car with a classmate named Jean and tell them about the coffin. Mack already knew a coffin was on board because he saw them load it but he didn't know it belonged to Roger. Jean says that the body must be traveling home to California where Roger's parents live. Apparently he'd been in some trouble and they shipped him off to his grandparents in Chicago to straighten him out.
We also learn that Roger died by burning to death after his car hit a wall.
They all sit and discuss – in the very public dining car – how they were mean to Roger. Mack was responsible for the nickname. It's a combination of the “F” from Fredrick and the “Rog” from Roger. He seems to feel bad about sticking Roger with a nickname he hated. Hannah recognizes that it was a cruel thing to do but absolves Mack because he's her boyfriend.
Nice, Hannah.
I hate that Hoh recognizes that Frog was a name they used to bully him but she keeps on using it. It's like Hoh is bullying him too.
Kerry goes next. Roger asked her out not long after he came to their school. She said 'no' and he demanded to know why. He said if she didn't give him a good reason for her refusal, she was going to be sorry. It made her so nervous that she laughed and he got humiliated and stomped off. She continued to be scared of him after that but still feels guilty for laughing at him. As offenses go, this one seems pretty minor. He should have accepted her refusal.
Lewis adds his story to the mix. He had gym class with Roger and on his first day, Coach asked Lewis to pick Roger for his basketball team during class. Lewis could tell that Roger was big and clumsy and he had a bet with Mack over who was going to win so he refused. Roger overheard him refuse and got aggressive about it which led him to being kicked out of class and suspended for two days.
Roger is definitely not the kind of person you root for. Hoh is doing a very good job of making him extremely unsympathetic in an effort to make what her characters did to him seem not so bad.
Now it's Jean's turn. We barely know her but I guess we'll listen. She is the editor of the school paper or something. Roger asked her if he could join but she told him there were no openings. It was a lie. Anyone can join the paper at any time. I guess he found out.
They all turn and wait for Hannah to contribute. She says she was never mean to him but the fact she immediately jumps up and leaves the table makes her look like a liar.
Odds Hannah was never mean to Roger: 10%
Hannah walks across the dining car, pretending to get in line for something to drink. She wonders if Roger's death was truly an accident or if she and her friends made him so miserable that he took his own life and crashed on purpose. Clearly she did something to him too. She doesn't give us a hint, though.
The train goes through a tunnel which cuts off the outside light. Within seconds, the inside lights cut off too. Pandemonium ensues until one of the chaperones tells them to get a grip. They'll be out of the tunnel in a few seconds and everything will be fine. When they do emerge, they discover that someone turned the lights off on purpose. Suddenly there's a strange noise and they all turn to see Lolly sitting at one of the tables with a red handkerchief knotted tightly around her neck. She's turning purple as she tries to pull it off but the knot is tight. Mack runs to help but she passes out from lack of oxygen before he can get it untied. Luckily he gets it off her and she starts breathing again. Quick sends Lewis to go find the conductor and to see if there's a doctor on board.
The conductor comes back with a doctor in tow. The kids are all ordered to go to their compartments and to stay there until one of the chaperones come to get them. All four of our main group go back to Hannah and Kerry's compartment. Kerry immediately throws out Eugene as a suspect because he's just as creepy as Roger was. Hannah recalls a time she came across him in a cemetery and he told her that he just liked hanging out there among the graves. She decides this is enough to agree with Kerry that he's a suspect.
These people are super annoying.
Hannah goes off on an internal tangent about Lolly. She wonders why she hangs out with losers like Eugene....the other one....and Roger. She tells us that Lolly is a “big girl” but tries her best to look “neat and clean” despite that and sometimes even looks “almost pretty” against all odds.
Fuck you, Hannah.
And a bigger 'fuck you' to Hoh. Seriously? A big girl can't be pretty? She has to struggle to look clean? What kind of bullshit is that?
Eventually Quick comes along and tells them that Lolly is okay but she's going to be disembarking later that evening and catching another train home. Hannah almost wants to join her. A detective will be coming on board when they stop in Denver the next day so he can investigate the matter. Quick again tells them not to leave the compartment until dinner and then goes on her way.
The train stops and Hannah watches out the window as Lolly and the doctor get off their train and onto one facing in the other direction. I guess the doctor is accompanying Lolly back to Chicago so the chaperones can stay with the rest of the kids. She doesn't see anyone else get off but she doesn't have a view of the entire train.
Eventually they're told that dinner is being served. The guys take off for their compartment, saying they'll meet the girls after they clean up a bit. I'm not sure why they needed to clean up but it's really just a plot device to get the girls alone. Kerry takes so long getting ready that everyone else is already in the dining car when they leave their compartment. The boys aren't around so they figure they lost patience and went ahead.
Wrath, if you ignored me in the beginning, STOP READING HERE!
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Hannah and Kerry are halfway to the dining car when Kerry screeches and stops. She left her necklace back in her compartment and she couldn't possibly go anywhere without it. She tells Hannah to wait for her in the corridor and she dashes back the way they came. Hannah is freaking out because of her claustrophobia. She starts to go back after Kerry but then she's grabbed from behind and a cloth is put over her mouth. She's dragged to the baggage car area and then knocked over the head. Everything goes black.
Hannah wakes up trapped in the coffin. She struggles to get out and then panics and starts hyperventilating. She thinks she hears voices and starts kicking at the coffin lid but she ends up passing out. When she wakes up again, she's in Mack's arms. Apparently they were looking for her all over and heard her kicking the coffin when they checked the baggage car.
It's interesting to note that Hannah was the only one in the coffin. There was no body in it.
Odds the coffin has always been empty: 50%
Maybe the body was never in it. Maybe the body got moved. Your guess is as good as mine.
Hannah wonders if Roger really died at all. Maybe he faked his death somehow and he's on the train to torment them.
Odds Roger faked his death: 10%
That would be extremely hard for a teenager to pull off successfully. I know what Hoh's trying to do, but it doesn't really make sense.
The next morning the train stops in Denver. Quick escorts Hannah to a clinic of some sort so she can be checked out by a doctor. She's cleared to stay on the trip. Mack, Lewis and Kerry are supposed to meet her outside the clinic after they grab breakfast but only Lewis and Kerry show up. Lewis says that they were walking back and all of a sudden Mack yelled “hey!” and took off running. They have no idea where he is.
They wait outside the clinic for awhile and then walk back to the train thinking maybe Mack went back there instead. There's no sign of him and Hannah can't see Eugene either in the crowd milling around the train. The chaperones are notified and the train is held. Eventually Mack shows up looking sweaty and flushed. He says he simply got lost. Everyone is loaded onto the train and it pulls away from the station.
Wait.
Isn't Eugene still missing?
Was he ever missing?
I hate Hoh.
When they're alone, Mack tells the group that he thought he saw Roger and took off after him. He followed "Roger" to a shed like thing and went inside after him. No one was in it and Mack ended up stuck inside. He had to break a window and shimmy out. Hannah is more convinced than ever that Roger is alive and fucking with them. When she tells the others, they think she's lost her mind.
Mack and Lewis leave to talk to the detective. Kerry points out that Roger had no reason to hurt Lolly because she was his girlfriend. As if people don't hurt the people they date all the damn time. Jean says that she overheard the two of them fighting in the mall the afternoon before Roger crashed. Lolly didn't want him to go somewhere because she thought it was a cruel joke but Roger was determined to go. Jean didn't get any more info than that because Roger and Lolly got kicked out of the store but it leads the others to believe that things might not have been great between the two of them.
Kerry wants Hannah to rest because she thinks Hannah is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Hannah resists the order to nap but Kerry and Jean leave so she can have some quiet time. Almost immediately the detective shows up to question Hannah, but we learn nothing new. After he leaves, Hannah decides to give in and lay down. She closes the curtains so the room is pretty dark and then opens the upper sleeping compartment where Lolly has been sleeping. For some reason she feels safer being higher up. Not sure why. As she's climbing into the bunk, she kicks something solid. She turns on the reading light and screams. Roger's burned body is lying in the bunk.
Hannah runs out into the corridor. She's so shocked that she can't really do anything, so she just stands there and cries. Eventually Kerry and Jean come back. Hannah can't really express what's going on so Kerry instructs Jean to go for help. She and Hannah stay out in the corridor until Jean comes back with Mack and Lewis. They go inside the compartment to look but it's empty. Hannah doesn't believe them. She goes in to look for herself and there's no trace of Roger's body. She decides that he's alive and fucking with her.
Odds Roger is alive: 0%
Obviously Hoh wants us to believe it, which means it can't be true.
They decide to go to the recreation car to watch a movie to take their minds off things. Hannah can't concentrate on anything. All she's doing is listening for something awful to happen. Toward the end of the movie she hears a weird whirring sound and a soft exclamation but no one else reacts to it. When the lights come on after the movie, everyone stands up except Lewis. He calmly informs them that he thinks he was stabbed. Sure enough, they find an ice pick sticking out of the back of his seat. It must be a fucking looooooooooooong ice pick because Hoh says it went through the seat, through Lewis's body and poked out just under his collar bone.
Do you think Hoh thought this one through? How long does she think an ice pick blade is? Because I looked it up and they seem to average between 4-6 inches. I know the train probably didn't have super cushioned movie theater seats or anything but you'd think they were a couple of inches thick at least. And then it had to go through his torso. I also looked that up. The average man has a chest depth of 10 inches. I guess Lewis could have been smaller because he's just a teen but how the hell is an ice pick going through a chair and a human torso and stick out the other side? Also, can you imagine the force needed to shove an ice pick through a chair and a torso? It would take a lot. How did no one notice this? And how the hell did it make a “whirring” sound? NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE, HOH!
Lewis's injury is mild so he's just given some neosporin and a bandaid and sent on his way. Excuse me? He has a puncture wound through his entire body and you're giving him neosporin and a bandaid? I.....I just can't......nothing is making sense anymore.
Hannah decides they need to check the coffin. All of the students are supposed to remain in their compartments after supper so they have to sneak out. They don't turn on any lights in the baggage car so they won't get caught.
They get caught anyway.
They've barely lifted the coffin lid an inch when the conductor turns the light on and busts them. Somehow that inch is enough for Hannah to see a wrist with a distinctive tattoo that she remembers Roger having. The conductor orders them back to their compartments but they don't go. Hannah is too afraid to go back to hers so they all go to the observation car instead. Apparently it's a car with huge glass windows and a glass roof. It's unlocked and empty so the five of them sleep there.
So the chaperones aren't even doing nightly bunk checks? This is lawless.
The next morning, the girls all go to the shower room while the boys wait outside in the corridor to stand guard. Hannah hears Jean finish her shower first but she isn't in the room when Hannah comes out. She pokes her head outside the door to see Mack and Lewis talking to Eugene. She asks if Jean came out and they say 'no'.
Wait.
I thought Eugene was missing.
Seriously, why even put that in if it meant nothing?
Were we supposed to believe that Eugene might have had something to do with what happened to Mack? Because if we were supposed to believe that, Hoh didn't do a very good job of making the connection.
So Jean never left the shower room but she's not still in the shower room. They tell the detective and he determines that Jean is probably playing a trick on them. The ceiling panels are easy to move and if you can crawl up into one, you can crawl through the duct work and re-enter the train through another panel. The group insists that Jean would never do such a thing but the detective thinks it would have been extremely hard for someone to pull her up through the ceiling without Hannah and Kerry noticing.
True. But it would also be hard to shove an ice pick through a chair and a human without someone noticing. Hoh doesn't give a fuck.
Mack and Lewis organize a search party, getting the entire class to help. They break off into sets of four which conveniently leaves our four as a unit. They go to the observation car first. While they're in there, they conveniently hear a scream and look up to see something pink going over the side of the train. Hannah remembers Jean was wearing a pink robe so she pulls the emergency cord to stop the train.
It's a good thing they happened to be in the right place at the right time to see this.
Also, Jean is dead.
The other chaperone decides to accompany Jean's body back to Chicago so that leaves Quick supervising over 100 students all by herself with a murderer on board. This is one of the most unrealistic things I've ever read and I've read books about potato shifters.
Hannah runs off to her compartment alone while the others are being questioned by the detective. No, it doesn't make sense for Hannah's character to do this. She wouldn't even go in there with all of her friends. There's no way she'd go alone. But Hoh needs her alone, so fuck characters staying in character.
Lolly is in the compartment waiting for Hannah who she seems to have predicted would arrive alone. Give me a fucking break, Hoh. Lolly starts her villain monologue, explaining how she knotted the handkerchief around her own neck and then escaped the other train immediately after getting on board, returning to this one where she hid in the coffin and the ceiling. No, it doesn't make sense. Hoh isn't even trying at this point.
Also, Lolly tied that damn thing tight enough she passed out. How could she be so sure someone would get it off in time? I know she wasn't just pretending and holding her breath because Mack really struggled to get it off her. If it had been loose enough for her to breathe, he wouldn't have so much trouble. Seems like a big fucking risk.
Lolly is the one who locked Mack in the shed in Denver. She was hoping to set it on fire and kill him but there were too many people around. She's also the one who threw Jean off the roof. No clue how she got her up there. Lolly is inhumanly strong apparently. She stabbed Lewis, hoping to kill him as well. And she was the body Hannah found in Kerry's bunk. She was there expecting to scare Kerry.
So...she tries to kill the others but she was just going to scare Kerry? That doesn't fucking make sense. I'm so sick of Hoh right now.
Lolly yells at Hannah for how they treated Roger when he was new to school and trying to fit in and sad about being dumped by his parents. Yeah, they're all awful. Roger was awful too. I'm sure Hoh did that so we wouldn't be so hard on Hannah and her friends for being massive fucking bullies (Kerry excluded because all she did was turn down a date and laugh because he scared her. Then again, she DID call him Frog so I guess she's not exempted after all.).
Hannah manages to get past Lolly and runs down the corridor. She collides with Mack and the others who have come to look for her. They don't believe her when she says Lolly is in her compartment because she's been crying “Roger” all damn trip. Sure enough, when they get back there, Lolly is nowhere to be seen. Luckily for Hannah, though, there's a note on the mirror in lipstick basically saying that Lolly is going to join Roger now. They search the plane and only find a broken window with a scrap of Lolly's denim jacket stuck on the glass. The detective concludes that she jumped out the window to her death.
Odds Lolly is dead: 0.09%
The train makes it to San Francisco. The kids are given the option of continuing the tour with their single chaperone or flying home at the school's expense. Hannah decides to fly home but the plane doesn't leave for three hours so she joins the group for one stop on the tour. It's an old house high up on the rocks. Fog moves in, making it hard to see anything from the outside observation deck so most of the group mills around inside. Hannah gets claustrophobic so she slips outside to get some fresh air. No one seems to notice she's gone.
Hannah is standing near the railing, looking out over the water, when she's grabbed from behind. It's Lolly. She never went out the window. She hid until the train stopped and then followed everyone to the house. Somehow. Without being noticed by the dozens of people around.
I can't be fucked to even care about how stupid this is anymore.
Lolly has a knife and an urn. Roger's body was never on the train. He was cremated and no one ever picked up the ashes so Lolly took them. She plans to scatter them in the ocean because San Francisco was his favorite place. Hannah asks about the coffin and Lolly says she ordered it shipped COD (cash on delivery) to Roger's parents so they'll remember they had a son they threw away.
It turns out Lolly has the same tattoo as Roger so it was her wrist that Hannah saw in the coffin.
Hannah picks a rock up and tries to hit Lolly with it. It ends up striking her arm or something and makes her drop the urn. Lolly lunges to grab it and goes over the side of the observation deck. Her body crashes into the rocks below.
Maybe she's dead this time.
Mack and the others come running out. They saw everything through the window. Hannah sobs and confesses what she did to Roger. Apparently he was doing a lot of yard work for her father in preparation for a party being thrown for Hannah. She felt bad for him working out in the hot sun and took a lemonade and some food out to him. He asked about the party and she impulsively invited him. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Her friends were going to be pissed when he showed up. A fight might even break out. And poor Kerry was going to be extremely uncomfortable with him around. So on the night of the party, Hannah waited for him by the door. He showed up looking excited in much nicer clothes than usual. Hannah told him he had to leave because she suddenly came down with the flu and she was going to end the party. It was clear she was lying and, hurt, he ran back to his car and roared off into the night. A few minutes later, he crashed into a wall and died.
Wow.
We still don't know if it was an accident or on purpose. Either way, everyone was an asshole here. There wasn't a single sympathetic character in this entire book.
The book ends abruptly after Hannah's confession. She decides to stay on the tour after all and they all vow to do their best to remember Lolly and Roger.
That's it? Hoh really ran out of fucks after the second or third chapter and it shows. None of this book made much sense. It was ridiculous.
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