Shades of Simon Gray
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Simon Gray is the ideal teenager — smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon crashes his car into The Liberty Tree, another portrait starts to emerge. Soon an investigation has begun into computer hacking at Simon’s high school, for it seems tests are being printed out before they are given. Could Simon be involved?
Simon, meanwhile, is in a coma — but is this another appearance that may be deceiving? For inside his own head, Simon can walk around and talk to some people. He even seems to be having a curious conversation with a man who was hung for murder 200 years ago, in the branches of the same tree Simon crashed into. What can a 200-year-old murder have to do with Simon’s accident? And how do we know who is really innocent and who is really guilty?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the night that a horde of peepers disgorge themselves from local streams into the town of Bellehaven, "shrieking like souls of the dead disturbed from their slumber," a teenage computer whiz named Simon crashes his car into a landmark, the Liberty Tree. Crows descend next, to consume the dead frogs, and a number of portentous plagues follow metaphoric indicators that the bucolic community is not what it seems. Simon, who has been hacking into the school's computer system to help a group of popular teenagers cheat on their exams, falls into a coma. His stupor is punctured by a series of dreamlike encounters with the ghost of the legendary murderer who was hanged from the Liberty Tree 100 years ago. Was he really as guilty as everyone thought he was? And will Simon's accident catalyze the popular girl with a guilty conscience into renouncing her ill-won college acceptance? Readers may wonder why the police would get involved with a case of high school cheating, and it's hard to believe that these students could fool their teachers. But Simon though forced to share space with a number of less-appealing protagonists, including a shallow, pot-smoking younger sister and a stupid, ambitious jock is a thoughtful, interesting character. McDonald (Shadow People; Swallowing Stones) paints an eerie, electric atmosphere of menace that lingers past the final page. Ages 12-up.
