Two unlikely worlds collide as prize-winning Malcolm Duffy explores the life-changing repercussions of a single action in a game gone wrong. Sixteen-year-old Rory is a rule-breaker, a risk taker, a maverick.As a kick he comes up with a game called Dead Straight Line.The idea is simple – wherever you happen to be, you’ve got to get home in a dead straight line.Across the back gardens of stranger’s houses, locked parks, trespassing on private property – whatever it takes. One day, Rory pressures his friend Eliot into playing, resulting in a serious accident.Shunned by friends and facing pressure from his furious parents, Rory becomes even more angry and disruptive.When his school suggests helping out a care home, he’s unimpressed.But paired up with Tanker, an eighty-year-old Geordie military veteran, who fought in the Falklands War, things slowly begin to change.From seeking thrills to finding friends, choosing the right path in life is never a dead straight line.But there is always a way.