Set in an unnamed developing country, Andy Mulligan's Trash (2010) is a young-adult thriller novel about three boys whose lives change when they find in the garbage a bag linked to a murder and millions of stolen dollars. With corrupt police and government officials hunting them down, the boys use their street smarts to solve the mystery and redistribute the money to the poor people to whom it rightfully belongs.
Narrated by several different characters, the book begins in the voice of fourteen-year-old Raphael. He finds a bag containing a wallet, eleven thousand pesos, photos of a girl, a map, a key, and the ID of a houseboy named José Angelico, who was killed by the police during an interrogation. Raphael and his friend Gardo keep the wallet to themselves when the police come to their dumpsite looking for it. After enlisting the help of a younger boy named Rat, Raphael and Gardo learn that the key opens a luggage locker at the train station. Inside the locker, they find a letter addressed to Gabriel Olondriz, a man who is serving a life sentence in retaliation for trying to prove Senator Zapanta's corruption. After Raphael is nearly killed by the police during interrogation, Gardo speaks to Gabriel in prison and learns Zapanta siphoned off thirty million dollars in international aid that was supposed to help the poor; he then framed Gabriel for several crimes when he tried to prove it. Gardo also learns that the code in José's letter can be de-encrypted using Gabriel's Bible. As the boys decode the letter in the hideout they rent with Rat's savings, they know the police are closing in. Before the police can catch them, the boys run across rooftops and escape into a taxi. Having figured out that the money is at the cemetery, the boys search the place until they find three graves belonging to members of José's family. There they meet his daughter, Pia Dante, and realize her grave must contain the money. After pulling out a coffin full of cash, the boys return to their community dumpsite and throw the money into the wind, leaving their poor neighbors to find it. They escape the city wearing school uniforms and take a boat to Sampalo, the southern island Rat is from. They end the story by saying they used the money they kept to buy fishing boats and now live happy lives as fishermen.
Exploring themes of corruption, poverty, solidarity, oppression, violence, and aspiration, Trash depicts children with few options seizing an opportunity to build a better life. In pursuing their ambition, the boys fulfill José Angelico's mission to exact justice against a corrupt political system that hoards undeserved wealth and maintains a status quo that keeps people suffering.
In 2015, director Stephen Daldry released a film adaptation of Trash. Although the novel is set in an unnamed country inspired by Mulligan's time teaching in the Philippines, the film version is set in Brazil and stars children cast from the country's impoverished favelas.
