The Dead of Night

The Dead of Night is a young adult novel by the Australian writer John Marsden, published in 1997. It is the second book of his Tomorrow series, in which Australia is invaded and a group of teenagers from a country town fight back on their own.

The narrator is Ellie Linton, and she tells the story in the first person as it happens. The group is based in a valley they call Hell, from which they have been mounting small attacks on the occupying forces, and the previous book ended with two of them, Corrie and Kevin, wounded and left behind in enemy hands.

Morale in the camp is poor when this book opens, and the decision to go looking for their friends takes the group out of the bush and into the hospital where they were last seen. Ellie describes the mechanics of the operation and the ordinary concerns that surround it, and the novel is as interested in the way a teenager thinks about risk as in the military situation, which is presented entirely from the perspective of the people living inside it.