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Joyride was the first release in the BBC Class novels series. It was written by Guy Adams, who had written for Doctor Who and Torchwood previously.

Publisher's summary[]

"So, can you just leap into other people's bodies? Take them over? And while you’re in control, you can do whatever you want? Brilliant."

Poppy is a quiet girl, right up until she steals a car and drives it through a shop window.

Max is a nice guy, but then he kills his whole family. Just for fun.

Amar always seems so happy, so why is he trying to jump to his death from the school roof?

Some of the students of Coal Hill School are not themselves. Some of them are dying. Ram has just woken up in a body he doesn't recognise, and if he doesn't figure out why he may well be next.

Plot[]

to be added

Characters[]

Worldbuilding[]

Individuals[]

  • Ram's mother is called Janeeta.
  • One of the first boyfriends of Garry Fletcher's mother was a squaddie.
  • Fletcher often buys doner and chips from Ranesh at the local kebab shop.
  • Damon Adeola wonders if he should tell his mother Vivian about the strange call from Ram.

Locations[]

Shoreditch locations[]

Other locations[]

  • Stephen Patrick bets on horse races in Aintree.
  • George Barker is offered a return ticket to Basildon.
  • Quill takes the Central line to get home.
  • When Ram walks along Swallow Avenue, he finds himself on Old Street.
  • Barry Taylor assumes that, since Charlie is an alien, he must be from Mars.
  • Fletcher drops Mrs Cummings at Barbican.
  • Mike was thrown under a tube train at Edgware Road.
  • Fletcher plans to run away to Dubai after making enough money.
  • Steve once had a girlfriend from Leeds. He thinks of running away with his family to Leeds or Manchester.
  • James Banks transferred to a body of an eighteen-year-old from Brixton.

Technology[]

  • Poppy tries to break a window of a silver Honda. Ram thinks that nobody would like to change a Porsche for a Fiat.
  • The London Transport machine won't top up Miss Quill's Oyster card.
  • Charlie owns an iPad.
  • Max Collins plays Xbox with his headphones on not to disturb his parents.
  • Max and Tommy Collins' parents use secateurs and trowels for gardening.
  • Imogen Farmer removes the battery from the smoke alarm in the Collins' house to prevent it from going off.
  • The news about Max Collins spreads from one Wi-Fi network to another.
  • Quill throws a biro cap in Lowe's forehead.
  • Mike brings a petrol powered generator that can deliver electricity up to 230 volts.
  • Fletcher uses a lump hammer and Mike uses a crowbar to kill the aliens.
  • Steve tells Fletcher he thinks Joyriders does some VR thing.
  • Ram surmises that the body-swapping technology cannot be bought in an Apple Store.
  • Not all humans know how to split an atom.
  • It is strange for Ram to be without a mobile phone.
  • Buses use hydraulic brakes.

Police[]

  • Poppy's body is removed from the car by SOCOs.

Media[]

Organisations[]

  • Matteusz suggests a possibility of donating money on JustGiving.
  • Mike owns a company named Sparkz Mobile Disco.
  • A UNIT team are brought in to take away Fletcher's alien technology.

Culture[]

  • A splatter from a skull shot through by a bullet in a computer game is compared to paintings by Jackson Pollock.
  • Tommy Collins is wearing Iron Man pyjamas.
  • Ram compares his being in somebody else's body to a Ryan Reynolds movie where he swaps with Jason Bateman, who gets to be Ryan Reynolds and decides not to have sex with Olivia Wilde.
  • Toby Moore remarks that viola, the first name of Viola Cummings, is a musical instrument.
  • Quill and Charlie hear sounds of an acoustic guitar.

Science[]

Food and drinks[]

Animals[]

  • Tanya thinks about a small dog attacking an Alsatian.
  • Damon notes that Swallow Avenue has the same name as a bird.
  • Steve scrunches himself into a ball like a hedgehog.

Notes[]

  • The UK print erroneously refers to Coal Hill as "Coal Hill School". It is also inconsistent in spelling April's surname, giving the correct "MacLean" on some occasions and an incorrect "MacClean". The US print corrects the misspellings of April's surname to their proper form, but does not correct the references of Coal Hill as a school.
  • In this story, the alien presence in Shoreditch is not related to the Rift at Coal Hill Academy: the aliens arrived using their own space/time travelling technology six months prior to the events of TV: For Tonight We Might Die.
  • The events of this story take place between The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo and Nightvisiting.[source needed]

Audio release[]

  • The story was released as an unabridged 6x CD audiobook by Blackstone Audio and HarperCollins, read by Steve West.

Continuity[]

External links[]

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