Whisper of Death - Christopher Pike

Published: 1991
Current Cost: Looks to be out of print now but Amazon do have various 2nd Hand copies for 1p as per link - Whisper of Death


 Okay, I have to admit that I was a big Christopher Pike fan as a young teenager and it was his books that really got me interested in reading. My sister was reading Point Horror novels but I thought I was being "older" by reading Christopher Pike novels.

I decided to read this novel after I entered my thirties and wanted to read a Christopher Pike book so that it would bring back some of my fonder memories of my youth.

Anyway, onto the book itself and I have to admit whilst these type of books used to take me a couple of weeks to read it only took my 4 hours to read this. It felt more like a novella than a full novel but of course this is aimed at the younger reader and not someone of my more mature years.

The first quarter of the story itself seemed to be all about setting up how the main character and her boyfriend got together and fell in love. I have to admit that I found this section a little bit of a struggle to read as it was rather dull and I found the premise of these two people "loving" each other after only 2-3 dates rather irritating.

After this however it did pick up a bit, as we basically end up with these two love birds and three other teenagers finding themselves all alone when everyone else in the world seems to vanish into thin air. The group of characters are pretty stereotypical;
1. The rather annoying main female character (Like the irritating Bella from the Twilight series)
2. The good looking, loving boyfriend
3. The fat, geeky smart kid who is a "nice" guy
4. The kid who is a wanna-be bad guy
5. The good looking popular girl
Nothing new or innovative in that list of characters and I have to admit the only one I felt anything for was the fat geeky kid and thats probably because I remember being the fat geeky kid :-p

Anyway, these guys meet up they begin to realise that they all have something in common although none of them seem to want to admit what that is. Of course, soon they start dieing and the truth slowly comes out before a rather whacked out ending that didn't really feel like it closed out much.

Overall, I can't say I was that impressed, the middle seemed okay but the beginning and the ending just didn't do much for me. In the end though I will probably still try and find some more Christopher Pike books so I can just laugh at what I used to think were the best books in the world.