68 pages • 2 hours read
Gretchen McNeil#MurderTrending
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source material includes descriptions of abduction, torture, murder, and graphic violence, as well as sexual references, objectification, and harassment.
Seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera awakens in a kill room on Alcatraz 2.0 after being falsely convicted of murdering her stepsister, Monica. Alcatraz 2.0 is a privatized prison located on an island in the San Francisco Bay. It is run by the Postman, a mysterious television executive. The Postman convinced the president of the United States—a former reality star—to use serial killers to execute convicted murderers in entertaining ways. Every aspect of the prisoners’ lives is filmed and broadcast in real time on the Postman app. A double doorbell tone alerts viewers to an upcoming kill.
The killers adopt unique personas, costumes, and signature methods of execution. Cecil B. DeViolent recreates film scenes for his murders. Hannah Ball is a cannibalistic chef. Gucci Hangman utilizes scarves as garrotes. Molly Mauler wrangles vicious wild animals. The more dramatic a kill, the more “spikes” users give each video, increasing the executioners’ popularity and profit. Users comment on the kills and create “megahit” trending hashtags.
Dee dislikes the Postman app because it triggers memories of when she was abducted by a psychotic kidnapper at the age of 11.
In a mirror, Dee sees that she is dressed as Cinderella, making her Prince Slycer’s victim. He chases his victims through a maze and knifes them. Cameras in each corner of the room show a red light, indicating they are active. Dee wants to stay alive to find Monica’s killer. She grabs the mirror. Prince Slycer, dressed as Cinderella’s prince and wearing night-vision goggles, enters and indicates that Dee should run. Instead, Dee reflects light onto Slycer, wrecking his night vision. When he attacks, Dee trips him and hits him with the mirror, and he falls on his knife, dead.
Chapter 2 Summary
Dee cannot believe she killed Slycer and realizes that all the other executioners, including Robin’s Hood, the deadly archer, and Gassy Al, the asphyxiator, will want revenge. More lights come on, and Nyles, a tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed boy near Dee’s age enters the room. In a British accent, he genially assures her that the cameras are now off and that she can trust him. Dee knows that everyone on the island, however, is a convicted murderer or a serial killer. Nyles has diplomatic immunity while his case is on appeal. He was convicted of killing his parents, but his trial was also a sham. Nyles's job is to orient new inmates to the island. Nyles calls the executioners “Painiacs” and labels their fans “Postmantics.” Dee protests her innocence. She painfully remembers finding Monica’s body and calling 911. Nyles urges her to come with him. Though fearing a trap, Dee follows.
Comments about Slycer’s killing show that some users, like the Griff @awakewideopen, think Slycer’s death was fake, while some dislike Dee, and others think Slycer underrated his victims. Dee gains the hashtag #CinderellaSurvivor.
Chapter 3 Summary
Alcatraz 2.0 was used as a military base, for movie productions, and as a housing community before the Postman bought it. Dee and Nyles leave the run-down warehouse district. Nyles warns that it is only safe to be outside when it is sunny and tells her to be home in the Barracks by dark, when most of the Painiacs strike. Crows line the rooftops of buildings.
Main Street is clean and cheerful. Nyles explains that everyone works a job to earn credits to purchase food at the bodega. Dee will be working at I Scream, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. Cameras actively observe everything. Over the door is a large monitor. Half of the screen shows rotating views of the island, while half replays Dee’s encounter with Slycer, along with a rapidly scrolling comments feed.
Nyles introduces Dee to her coworker, Griselda Sinclair. Dee recognizes Griselda as a “hottie” from the Postman app. Griselda is unfriendly. She tells Dee that as #CinderellaSurvivor, she has 20 million spikes, which means Dee does not have long to live.
Chapter 4 Summary
The Postman could not initially believe that Dee killed Slycer—ruining the Postman’s careful plans—but the Postman saw Slycer’s dead body and confirmed his death. The Postman makes sure the cameras continuously monitor Dee. The Postman vows to torture Dee and force her to witness the deaths of everyone she cares about.
Chapter 5 Summary
Griselda bluntly tells Dee that no one on Alcatraz 2.0 can “win” even though Dee killed Slycer. Blair, an Asian woman with blue-streaked bobbed hair and blue makeup, introduces herself as Dee’s boss. She explains there are two sets of rules on Alcatraz: “theirs” and the inmates’. Their rules consist of “work, get paid, eat” (27). Dee must stay alone in her house each night, and she cannot murder other inmates. If she does, the people she loves will be harmed. Cameras watch everything.
Dee did not know much about the app until she was forced to watch it in her jail cell. Dee does not trust the others and does not want to explain her childhood abduction. Nyles gives Dee a key and a plastic credit card featuring her prison mugshot.
When Blair announces that she is going to tell Dee how to stay alive, the cameras click off. The inmates’ rules include: Offering to help someone is a trap. Don’t go out after sundown. Do not sleep between 8:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., when the app has the most viewers and the most executions. Check the seals on your food. Do not draw fan disapproval because it will make the Painiacs want to kill you and increase their spikes.
Dee thinks it might be best to give up and that finding Monica’s killer is impossible. Griselda sharply tells Dee she should accept her imminent, painful death. Blair reassures Dee sotto voice that some have survived a long time.
Chapter 6 Summary
Dee wants to ask Blair for more information, but they notice that the cameras are once again active. Ethan, a muscular Black guy in shorts and a tank top, enters the shop to walk home with them. Ethan enthusiastically quotes action films and acts like Griselda is his girlfriend, even though Griselda tersely denies a relationship. Nyles comments that the Postman enjoys controlling their lives, including their relationships. Ethan, unlike Griselda, is glad to have Dee on their “team” since she killed Slycer. Ethan was studying to be a personal trainer before he was sent to Alcatraz 2.0, and he keeps himself fit and ready for action.
As the group walks to the Barracks, Nyles points out that the crows perched everywhere are cameras. Dee remembers that the cameras were off when they left the warehouse after killing Slycer.
Some fans comment positively about the Postman grouping all the good-looking convicts together, while the Griff thinks they are actors. A fan notices someone trying to escape.
Chapter 7 Summary
Knowing that cameras are everywhere makes Dee feel hopeless. She learns that she has a better survival chance outside because the cameras are farther away, and the killers want good close-ups. They reach the island’s shoreline. Signs warn against swimming.
Blair lived in San Francisco with her wife. Her wife hated the Postman app, but Blair watched it, thinking the concept was fair until testimony from a psychiatrist led to Blair’s false conviction for killing an elderly neighbor. Dee asserts that she was framed.
A siren sounds, and the group sees a swimmer in the water, whom Ethan recognizes as Jeremy. They shout at Jeremy to come back, which puzzles Dee, who thinks he has a chance at freedom. Lights come on at a large concrete guard station. Black uniformed guards shoot into the water around Jeremy, and two camera-bearing drones hover over him. Jeremy screams as sharks attack and kill him.
Users snark over the hashtags describing Jeremy’s kill. Some think the kill was not creative. The Griff thinks it was fake.
Chapter 8 Summary
Lights in the guardhouse go off and all is quiet again. Nyles explains that the Postman keeps sharks in the bay to make sure no one swims off the island. The guards shoot pig’s blood into the water to attract the sharks while drones film the kill.
The Barracks are rows of identical duplexes monitored by crow cameras. Griselda and Ethan live next door together. Fans can pay extra to access a unique app channel for each inmate to watch their favorite anytime. The more fans an inmate has, the longer they stay alive. Griselda plays to her fans.
Dee's neighbor is a redheaded girl named Mara who keeps to herself. The group has not seen her in a long time. Blair instructs Dee how to search the house and check places where a killer might hide. The Postman will provide a wardrobe for whatever role they have decided Dee will play. Nyles bets that she will stay a princess. Dee is fearful of going inside alone but wants to appear strong. Blair reassures her that after the day’s action, it’s likely nothing will happen.
A site called Trazbet.com lists the executioners and gives betting odds and the payout for killing Dee.
Chapter 9 Summary
Dee fears “normalization.” She has food, a house, a job, and a role that she could accept. Pretending things are normal would make her life on Alcatraz 2.0 easier. Dee rejects this plan. She briefly glimpses Mara’s face in the next-door window before going inside.
Cameras watch from every ceiling corner, even in the bathroom, making Dee feel vulnerable. A large TV replays Jeremy’s death at top volume, featuring the Postman’s creative edits and the scrolling comment feed. There is a functional kitchen and a sliding glass door leading to a small backyard. Dee searches futilely for weapons for self-defense. Dee throws a table at the TV, which does not break. She gets an electric shock trying to take apart a camera.
Upstairs, Dee finds a collection of sparkly makeup and sees that the bedroom closet is filled with bright, fancy, girly blouses, skirts, and dresses. They are unlike what she used to wear at home. Though they have contemporary cuts, Dee knows that the clothes are princess outfits. She furiously refuses to play the Postman’s part and vows to go down fighting.
Chapter 10 Summary
Dee makes an alarm system for her house by hanging plastic sporks from lengths of dental floss and stringing them across the doors and windows. She fills cardboard coffee cups with small items and hangs them over the sliding glass door. She stays awake and alert, though she feels tired and hopeless. She doubts she can prove her innocence or find Monica’s murderer.
Dee has a nightmare about her abduction. She is 11 years old when she is kidnapped. Her kidnapper kept her in a white, doorless room. She hears a girl’s voice through an air duct and believes it is another prisoner. She quickly becomes friends with Kimmi, who knows Dee’s real name is Dolores. One day, Kimmi pulls the vent screen away and Dee sees her face. Kimmi has blond hair and blue eyes. Kimmi offers Dee a bag of food on the condition that Dee answers her questions and agrees to be her sister.
Chapter 11 Summary
Dee survives her first night but thinks the Postman’s killers will get her soon. Dee refuses to wear the shiny makeup and rebelliously mixes up her princess clothes instead of picking a coordinating outfit.
Seeing the replay of Slycer’s death and watching the scrolling comments reminds Dee of Monica, a fashionista who enthusiastically followed the Postman app and especially Gucci Hangman. Monica was good-natured, but not very self-reflective, though she sometimes questioned the morality of the Postman. Dee never thought that the Postman app was ethical. Dee found Monica strangled on the floor of Monica’s bedroom with a heart carved into the skin on her shoulder. Bloody pink tweezers were planted in Dee’s dresser. Dee flushed this evidence down the toilet, but the testimony of psychiatrist Dr. Farooq, based on one hypnosis session, was enough to convict Dee.
Dee gets good advice from Nyles, Blair, and the others but refuses to trust them, although she wants to find out more about survival on the island. Leaving for work, she sees Mara next door. The girl is older than Dee, with red hair and pale skin. Dee greets her, but Mara ignores her.
Fan comments on Dee’s colorful outfit range from negative to gushingly positive, and one thinks the clothes are “degrading.”
Chapters 1-11 Analysis
McNeil frontloads this section with infodumps but quickly builds suspense as readers meet teenage protagonist, Dee, get a glimpse of her backstory, and are swept along on her struggle to survive, solve her stepsister’s murder, and prove her own innocence. Throughout, McNeil establishes the themes of Perseverance in the Pursuit of Truth and Justice, Privatization and Monetization of the Penal System, and The Desensitizing Influence of Social Media. Motifs of trust and role-playing inform these concepts.
The novel’s premise is supported by real-life elements (the United States did have a former reality-show president, from 2017-2021, and social media is a driving force—both positive and negative—in today’s culture) making its dystopian vision just plausible enough for readers to willingly suspend their disbelief. McNeil's use of suspense also captures readers’ engagement. The novel’s pacing is swift and the stakes for Dee are high. The clock is ticking down for Dee to save and vindicate herself, as fans bet on Dee’s imminent, unpredictable death. Foreshadowing and flashbacks contribute to the suspense, providing clues to the characters’ futures and pasts while withholding complete information. Allusions to the different executioners and their methods, like the Barbaric Barista’s “full-body straight-razor shave,” raise the threat of macabre physical harm (29). The list of the inmates’ survival “rules” strongly implies that one will soon be broken. Dee’s memories of Monica’s death and brief references to her own traumatic abduction raise curiosity, while the anonymous, puppet-master Postman figure suggests secrets and conspiracies. All these elements add narrative tension.
Nyles advises Dee, “You’ll find an abundance of dark humor on the island” (20). Puns—Dee works at I Scream, the ice cream shop—and morbid jokes about death, like the Postman’s ironically embroidered pillow telling Dee she is “Home Sweet Home,” lighten the horror and gore for both the characters and the reader (20).
McNeil integrates social media comments into the narrative. Fan comments are visually offset from the body of the story, appearing in a white box on a light-gray page. While readers have more inside information than the fans, the comments offer different perspectives on Dee’s story. Presenting the fan comments to the reader in a format that mimics actual social media posts puts the reader in the position of a Postmantic scrolling through their feed. The reader experiences the violence of life on Alcatraz 2.0 through Dee while also experiencing the mediation of that violence as entertainment through the Postman app users’ comments. The juxtaposition increases the reader’s sense of dramatic irony, as they simultaneously identify with the jaded detachment of the app users and Dee’s real terror.
Dee, though she thinks of herself as an average teenager who “couldn’t even throw a punch,” is remarkably unfazed at finding herself on Alcatraz 2.0 in Slycer’s lair (2). Rather than panicking, she is first resigned, then irritated, and finally defiant. Dee is inordinately calm, and quickly trusts the helpful Nyles and Blair—though she asserts she will not trust them—and admires Griselda’s “take no shit” attitude (52). Dee even engages in sarcastic mental asides: When told her ID card works at the library, she snarks, “So I can catch up on some light reading while running for my life. Classy” (27). Dee seems more put out over her demeaning princess wardrobe than her impending doom. Although critical of Griselda’s ice-queen pragmatism, Dee also shows a cool resilience. She is shaken by Jeremy’s death, but rebounds quickly, a quality more befitting of a superheroine than a frightened teenager. These traits, though perhaps surprising in an actual teenager, are common for the protagonists of YA dystopias.
Although Dee thinks others are stronger than her, she commits to finding her stepsister’s killer and saving herself. Her perseverance, a key character trait, is clear from the outset in her declaration that she “[i]sn’t going down without a fight” (65). Dee’s new hashtag reflects Dee’s refusal to accept the helpless princess part that the Postman assigns her. Instead of being a victim, as #CinderellaSurvivor, Dee takes the role of empowered princess. She vows to uncover the truth and pursue actual justice, rather than the sham justice promoted by the government that is enacted on Alcatraz 2.0.
Dee’s perseverance in the pursuit of truth and justice is foreshadowed by the disapproval she describes having always felt toward the Postman. Dee is among the minority of Americans who question the ethics of having serial killers murder convicted prisoners, commenting, “That had been the main selling point of the Postman—justice. But was it really delivered?” (3). Dee is uncomfortable knowing that the Painiacs have killed more people for amusement than were killed by the actual convicts. Her moral questioning reveals a strong sense of equity and sets her apart from the masses who unthinkingly accept what the Postman and the president are selling. Dee blames the government—especially their president—for privatizing the prison, selling it to the Postman, and washing their hands of responsibility. Dee angrily rails, “Screw the Postman, screw the criminal-justice system, screw the government for letting it all happen” (65). Dee’s belief that the government is complicit in unjust imprisonment and grotesque killings suggests that trust is broken at the highest level.
Dee also wonders about the morality of turning the murders into entertainment, admitting, “Secretly, Dee thought it was dangerous to appeal to the most vulgar instincts of humanity, to normalize something as horrific as state-sponsored serial killers” (72-73). The normalization of gruesome murders reveals the desensitizing influence of social media. Instead of being horrified to see people killed in grotesque ways, fans of the Postman app watch it 24-7, pay extra for individual camera feeds, buy merchandise featuring the Painiacs, place bets on executions, and create snarky hashtags. The Postman app dehumanizes the inmates, separating them as “others” who deserve their graphic deaths. The app users form a twisted community around the Postman’s spectacle. The deaths are so elaborate that some, like the user the Griff, think they are fake. The Postman capitalizes on each death, as more spikes in views equate to more profit.
McNeil, like the Postman character, capitalizes on readers’ desire for the roller-coaster-like adrenaline rush from reading the detailed executions. Fans become voyeurs creating a power imbalance between the viewers and the observed. Many app users sexually objectify the inmates. One comments that they are glad the Postman is “grouping the hotties together” (40). Defining the inmates by their physical appearances reduces them to objects. Dee comments twice that she is “not a toy” and worries about the “pervs” and “creepy dudes” who watch the bathroom feeds from Alcatraz 2.0 (7, 71, 63, 60). While a few users comment that Dee’s princess outfits are “degrading to women” (78), many pay extra to watch “hotties” like Griselda and give her demeaning hashtags like “#GriseldaIWantYouInMyPants.” The fact that playing this role helps Griselda stay alive reveals again the desensitization of the app users.
