Product Description

An eight-grade class trip from a supposedly perfect and affluent little town to a state forest ends in a horrifying moment when a revered teacher plunges to her death from a towering cliff. If the students present witnessed the events leading up to the accident, they're not telling.

No one in the elite and tight-knit suburb of Knollwood, New Jersey, seems to know what really happened to the teacher. Worse yet, no one seems to care. Except Meg Foley. A young, single woman used to instructing inner-city kids, Meg gladly accepts a replacement position in this cushioned community. But in the eyes of her new students she sees a chilling hint of past terrors, and Meg is determined to find out the cause.

In her search for the truth, Meg raises painful questions that the people in the town would rather not answer: Was the teacher not what she seemed, not even close? Did a rebellious clan of teenagers take their revenge on a tough, critical authority? Or was it some greater evil that no one dares to acknowledge?

The hornet's nest Meg stirs quickly results in antagonism from school and local officials, as her quest probes a lot more than just a tragic but isolated incident. When unseen forces in the community target her as their enemy, first with threats, then with violence, Meg can no longer handle the danger alone.

At her request, Meg is joined by maverick Los Angeles police detective Dan Jarrett, her father's partner before his death in the line of duty. Jarrett must protect Meg and discover the truth about a teacher who never expected the result of her last assignment and a town that fiercely protects its own.

Mrs. Wilkens prayed silently for someone to help her. She looked over her shoulder as she continued to flee. She couldn't see or hear them any longer but was certain they were still behind her, somewhere.

By the time she saw what was just ahead of her, it was too late to stop, and she let out a blood-curdling scream that pierced the quiet at the edge of the earth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1113242 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-01
• Released on: 1999-07-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
Meg Foley's had three teaching jobs in the last four years, but when the comfortable, affluent suburban New Jersey school district offers her a post replacing a middle school teacher who died in a tragic accident, it looks as though she's finally found her niche. Her students--bright, motivated overachievers--are a far cry from the inner-city kids who were her last charges. But there's something going on in her classroom that worries her. Her eighth graders are keeping a secret about the way Mrs. Wilkens died, and when Meg tries to get to the bottom of it, bizarre things begin to happen. A stranger tries to push her car into the path of an oncoming truck; a pervert plays a sick joke on her; and a gang of marauding kids terrifies her. When Dan Jarrett, an L.A. cop who was her late father's partner, comes to her rescue, he's stonewalled, too--by the police chief whose grandson may be involved in Mrs. Wilkens' death, the principal and school board who want to cover it up, and especially the quiet little community that wants Jarrett and Foley to go back where they came from. The author is particularly skilled in evoking adolescent angst, and readers of this tidy little suspense novel will hope to encounter Dan Jarrett again in another outing by the author. --Jane Adams

From Kirkus Reviews
Formulaic sequel to Friedman's equally formulaic debut, A Hunting We Will Go (p. 134), brings back gung-ho LAPD maverick Detective Dan Jarrett, this time to rescue a small-town New Jersey schoolteacher, the daughter of Jarrett's dead partner, from obnoxious teenagers, abusive administrators, and a perverted killer. A field trip to the Delaware River Water Gap ends with Elaine Wilkins, a widowed Knollwood Middle School teacher, found dead at the bottom of a cliff. The park rangers write Wilkins off as an accident. But when some of the uncouth, hormonally challenged adolescents who were on the trip seem actually pleased with Wilkins's fate, and when a rumor gets around that she may have been mentally unbalanced, fellow teacher Meg Foley wonders: Did Wilkins jump? Was she pushed? Meg calls on Jarrett for help when another teacher whos asked the same question is almost killed from a mysterious explosion in the chemistry lab. Jarrett, already in hot water for beating a Hispanic psychokiller to death in front of TV cameras, is eager for a change of scene, especially when Meg hears, in a creepy anonymous phone call, that she'll be the next to die. In a secret dip into Wilkins's files, Meg also discovers that some nasty parental complaints had been lodged against Wilkins. Jarrett arrives in time to save Meg from a menacing assistant school superintendentand, naturally, it doesnt take long before passion blooms. Meanwhile, Meg and Jarrett are convinced that Wilkins was murdered. Did the surly, petulant eighth-grade psycho-in-training Timothy Sullivan, the chief of polices grandson, kill her because she was the subject of his twisted sex fantasies? What strange blue pills was Wilkins popping before she died? In an attempt (or so it would seem) to pump up the suspense in his sagging plot, Friedman tosses in a drive-by shooting, a torture-murder of a local cop, a kidnaping, and more. Routine, by-the-numbers page-yawner. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"A promising newcomer in the thriller genre." -- -- Booklist

"A real web of suspense." -- -- James Patterson

Customer Reviews

GOOD CHARACTERS, WEAK PLOT STRUCTURE
Hal Friedman's "Over the Edge" features two really likeable leadsin Dan Jarrett, an LA cop in trouble for killing a creep on a television talk show, and Molly Foley, a new teacher replacing a veteran educator who fell to her death while on a class outing, and who also happens to be the daughter of Jarrett's partner, killed by a drug lord. The way their relationship develops from the protective friend of his dead partner's daughter to a possible romantic interest is well done and you really like them and hope things work out.
Which is difficult, considering the mess the two find themselves in. The dead teacher's mysterious death is cited as an accident, but there's every indication that it could have been murder. But who did it? The darling little children, three of whom are like miniature Freddy Kreugers, or is there someone else lurking in the background? And what about this strange nephew, Wesley Gomes, who is not only embezzling money from the bank he works in, but is also doing some other strange things, too. And what about poor Paul, a local cop who looks like Jarrett, and is killed by a mysterious stranger?
The plot gets a little convoluted, and there are some strange twists and turns that are too conveniently constructed and left dangling. For instance, once you find out who the murderer of the teacher is, there's no explanation as to how this person got there. Also, the revenge of the drug lord's brother is so predictable that when it happens, you wonder why it didn't happen sooner.
However, in spite of the flaws, I did enjoy the book, mainly because of the characters of Jarrett and Molly. It left an opening for a sequel, which hasn't happened yet.

good book
I loved it! I couldn't put it down

Yawner
I am a mystery and suspense fan who found this book a little on the manipulative side. Structure was all right but the book suffers from a contrived set of events and caused me to yawn a little bit too much.