Tuesday 25 August 2015

Title: The Body of Christopher Creed Author: Carol Plum-Ucci

When Christopher Creed, the class freak and whipping boy, suddenly disappears without a trace, first his fellow students, then all the citizens of Steepleton join in to speculate on what could have happened to him.  As fingers begin pointing, the town starts to fall apart and several lives are changed forever.  innovative and intense, The Body of Christopher Creed will grab the reader and hang on until its chilling conclusion.

Torey Adams is a well-liked high-school student in a respectably historic town in South New Jersey.  Both has parents are successful in their careers and some see Torey's life as perfect.  He's got a beautiful girlfriend and enjoys comfortable life until he finds out that his classmate, Chris Creed, is missing.  There's no body yet, but the town can't help but speculate the details.  Did he just walk out of his life?  Commit suicide? 

Torey's group of friends cling to the gossip that he was murdered, possibly by someone from their school.  His friends all make jokes, particularly one outsider named Bo Richardson.  None of them can give the disappearance the respect it deserves.  This bothers Torey.  He reconnects with Ali, a girl he'd been better friends with in the past.  She seems affected by the disappearance and confides a lot of Chris's secrets to Torey.  As Chris's next door neighbour she has a great view of the Creed's house from her bedroom window.  She invited Torey over the next night to spy on the family's weird behaviour.  He agrees, even though he knows it'll look bad if it gets back to his girlfriend.  But Ali assures him that her boyfriend is coming over as well, which will help dispel rumours.  Besides, he feels a distance between him and his friends and thinks some time with Ali might help with his discomfort at how life has been unfolding. 

'What bugged [him] was how quick people were to think that [Chris] had been murdered... It was easier to point the finger at somebody else... Something inside him felt totally ready to be completely nice to the rejects - people like Creed...'

At Ali's he's able to shed the pressure from his friends and indulge in the mystery of the disappearance.  They watch the Creed family from her bedroom window.  Apparently, Mrs. Creed has a habit of meticulously searching Chris's room every night.  Ali speculates that she's looking for Chris's diary.  She thinks Mrs. Creed thinks it has some secret as to her son's whereabouts.

Soon, Ali's boyfriend shows up and Torey is surprised to see it's none other than Bo Richardson.  Torey is surprised to find the older boy kinder and more compassionate than anyone had ever given him credit for.  Sill, Bo remains true to his reputation as trouble-maker by suggesting they break into the Creed's house to steal the diary.  Torey concocts a plan based on a movie he saw once.  He'll phone the Creed residence from a pay phone demanding money in exchange for information regarding their son.  They think this will lure the parents out of the home giving Bo the opportunity to break into the house.  It worked so well in the movie, but has a disastrous chain-effect resulting in Torey, Bo and Ali getting hauled into the police station for questioning.  Bo is determined to take the consequences but Torey feels guilty.  His only relief is the fact that his mom is a lawyer who finds herself almost obligated to help Bo out of the worst of it. 

For all the trouble it caused their plan was successful.  Bo succeeded in procuring the diary from the house.  Ali and Torey become obsessed with the words inside.  Through the scribbled handwriting they discover that Chris had a girlfriend in another town; a girl he worked with.  A girl named Isabella Karzdan.  They read further to find out Chris saw a psychic with this girl.  Torey looks the girl up in the phone book and Ali and him take a trip to visit her.  She's nothing like Chris described in his diary.  This tells Ali and Torey that Chris wrote down a highly imagined life.  Isabella reveals that the psychic is her aunt and asks if they'd like to meet her.  Torey is skeptical, but when she tells him that he'll find the body in the woods under some boulders he can't help but be curious.  He knows the exact spot Isabella's aunt is describing.  Desperate to get to the bottom of the mystery he proceeds to check the area out.  It's then that he makes a most gruesome discovery.

The Body of Christopher Creed reveals the complex world of both high-school and adulthood and twists in a mystery so compelling you'll want to devour the story just to find the answer to what, exactly, happened to Christopher Creed?

Click here to purchase The Body of Christopher Creed. 

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