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Peter Flosnick
has vanished. He is a bit of a loner and doesn't seem to
have any friends. Peter is an Astronomy fan and writes an
article in his high school newspaper in an amateur astronomy
column. His stories are also carried by three different
local newspapers and in a star-watching column in a kid's
magazine. The articles are very popular and he receives a
lot of fan mail. But Peter has been missing for a few days,
and the police are actively looking for him.
Chloe Yan is
a teenager who has recently moved from Montreal, Quebec, a
city that she absolutely loved, to East Hastings, Ontario,
which she doesn't like very much. Montreal had everything
she could ever hope to find in a large city. Her life was
perfect. New Hastings has absolutely nothing, as it is a
small town out in the country. Her mother had recently
remarried a man named Louis Levesque, and he had just become
the new Chief of Police for East Hastings. So, Chloe, and
her younger sister, Pheobe, had been forced to leave behind
their friends and wonderful way of life to move out to the
sticks.
One morning
at the breakfast table, Chloe ask Levesque if they have
found Peter yet. Levesque tells her that they found him in
East Hasting Provincial Park at MacAdam's Lookout, which is
a dizzyingly high cliff face. Unfortunately for Peter, he
had fallen from the top of the cliff and was dead.
Being new at
school, Chloe really hasn't made any close friends yet. But
she has noticed a cute guy named Thomas Rennie. One day,
thinking that Thomas is waving to her in the hallway, Chloe
waves back only to realize that he is actually waving to a
couple of girls that are behind her, Lise Arsenault and
Daria Dattillo, whom Chloe refers to as the Empty-Headed
Queens. Lise is dating a boy named Matt Walker, who is best
friends with Thomas.
For Chloe's
English assignment, she finds herself working for the school
newspaper. She meets Ross Jenkins, a fellow student and the
Editor of the newspaper. She is givien a desk and when she
looks through her drawer, she finds some partial poems
written by Anna Marie Dattillo. Anna Marie was Daria's older
sister who was quite renowned for her poetry, and had worked
for the school newspaper before she was killed in a car
accident last year. Daria also has some poetry published
lately, and Ross claims that it is very good.
Chloe is
assigned to write a story about Daria and her poetry. But
every time she tries to talk with Daria about her poems,
Daria refuses to talk about it. Thomas approaches Chloe and
they start spending a lot of time together. Because of this,
Chloe is forced to hang out with Lise, Daria and Matt, and
she begins to notice some interesting things. Lise is very
angry about a woman named Eileen Braden, whom her father
used to date. In fact, Lise hates this woman who used to be
a teacher at their school. Thomas used to go out with Lise
before Matt. Peter's mother seems to think that he and Chloe
were friends, even thought they weren't. Daria had visited
Peter's house after his death looking for a notebook that
she claimed that Peter had borrowed. Matt had also visited
Peter's house and borrowed all of the video tapes Peter had
made of the night sky by recorded with a video camera
through his telescope.
People are
acting quite strange and Chloe starts to suspect that Peter
may not have just fallen off of the cliff, but may have been
pushed. Are Thomas' friends somehow involved in Peter's
death? Peter left clues behind, and as Chloe starts to
unravel the mystery of his scribbles in an Edgar Allan Poe
book, she turns to her step-father, Levesque, for some
advice.
Over the Edge is the
first book in Chloe & Levesque Mystery series written by
Norah McClintock. The series is intended for readers 11 years
and older.
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