Jungle Rumble

Plum-Ucci, Carol.  The Body of Christopher Creed.  New York: Hyperion, 2001.

Students have been flocking to this particular author for years.  For whatever reason, I have been putting off reading her, but I decided to picked up her first novel this past Friday.  And was done reading on Sunday!  The Body of Christopher Creed hooked me from the first sentence and kept me guessing through plot twists and turns.  Even after reading it, I continue to wonder about the ending and what did in fact happen to Christopher Creed. 

“The weirdest fact about Chris Creed’s disappearnace was that he was just plain gone. There was no trail of blood, not even a drop of blood. No piece of clothing on the side of the road. No runaway bus-ticketstub. No money missing from his bank account. No empty bottle that had been filled with pills the day before he disappeared. No missing razor blades. No nothing. The only thing we knew was that Chris Creed was not abducted…”

Essentially, the story is a mystery set in the small NJ town of Steepleton.  Christopher Creed is the class freak and oddball.  The day he disappears without a trace from his family and life, an email supposedly written by him finds it way into the Principal’s mailbox.  No one can decide if it is a suicide or runaway note.  Or was it a murder the email is trying to hide?  Fingers are being pointed and no one wants to take responsibility for their role in Creed’s disappearance.  It seems the only ones really concerned about uncovering the truth is an unlikely alliance of the popular jock/musician, the class slut and the town bully.  Plum-Ucci masterfully mixes realistic teen angst with paranormal occurrences.  The result is one eerie yet powerful novel about personal identity and tolerance.