User:Do The Roar/Loch (novel)

Loch is a 1994 novel by Paul Zindel. It is the first book in The Zone Unknown series. The plot revolves around a marine biologist and his two children joining an expedition to search for monsters reported to live in a remote Vermont lake.

Plot summary
The book begins in Loch Ness, Scotland, where the family of the protagonist, Luke Perkins, is on vacation. While Luke is on vacation, he witnesses the infamous Loch Ness Monster preying on sheep. He tells the rest of his family about his encounter, but they don't believe him. However, after the incident, Luke was nicknamed "Loch".

Ten years later, Loch is now 15 years old. His father, a marine biologist named Dr. Sam Perkins, decides to join an expedition to search for reported lake monsters in Lake Alban, a remote lake in Vermont. Dr. Sam's boss is a ruthless publishing mogul named Anthony Cavenger. Loch, his younger sister Zaidee, and Cavenger's teenage daughter, Sarah, go along on the expedition.

At the beginning of the expedition, one of the beasts surfaces next to a catamaran. The team's main photographer, a young, muscular man named Erdon, attempts to photograph it, and ends up being killed. After Erdon's death, Cavenger declares that the expedition must continue, and proposes a plan to capture one of the beasts. It is eventually revealed that the monsters are plesiosaurs, large marine reptiles thought to have become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago.

Loch and Zaidee then go exploring, and discover a baby plesiosaur. They name it Wee Beastie. They decide to hide the baby from the adults, out of fear that they might harm it.

Meanwhile, the plesiosaurs continue to terrorize the community around the lake, killing Jesse Sanderson.