The Blind Mirror

David, a twenty-eight-year-old artist, is recovering from a bad breakup with the mysterious and beautiful Sienna when he discovers a woman's dead body half-buried on the beach near Lompoc, California.To his surprise, David is interviewed not just by the local sheriff, but by FBI agent Krane, who declares that the woman was killed in a ritualistic manner. Soon the dead woman is identified as David's ex-girlfriend, and he becomes the prime suspect in her murder. But Sienna can't be dead; she keeps leaving messages on his answering machine. And no matter how badly their relationship ended, he couldn't have killed her. She was the love of his life.In self-defense, David begins his own investigation, trying to find out who the dead woman really is and what's behind the satanic murder. He's both helped and hindered by his friends, especially Julie, whom he had a crush on in high school and who has suddenly reappeared in his life, and the Reverend Pomus, who tries to warn David of the reality of true evil.David's search for Sienna and the truth about her disappearance take him from coastal California to New York City to Florida-and into the darkest night of his soul.

From Publishers Weekly

In this workmanlike foray into horror from bestseller Pike (The Season of Passage), commercial artist David Lennon returns home from two months in New York after breaking up with his girlfriend, Sienna Madden, to Lompoc, Calif., where he promptly discovers the decomposed body of a woman, later identified as Sienna, in their old trysting place on the beach. He insists Sienna's not dead because she's still phoning him. The police say otherwise. In the course of trying to defend himself from a murder charge, David delves deep into his past and that of his friends, as well as into the kinky vampire novel whose cover he's supposed to paint. His release for insufficient evidence sets off a second, more gruesome, and even more sex-laden journey, which involves cultists, bootlegged organ transplants and pseudo-immortality through drug-induced personality transference. Tight, clean writing and engaging secondary characters, like the doomed FBI agent Krane, somewhat make up for a plot built on the tired theme of the corrupt underside of small-town America. Best known for his YA fiction, Pike has produced an entertaining, if instantly forgettable, dark fantasy. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Pike is better known for his wildly popular young-adult series fiction than for his adult novels, but that soon might change. His latest adult thriller, a story about a man who finds the body of a murdered woman on the beach two months after his own girlfriend walked out on him, begins with a mystery (Is it possible the dead woman is David Lennon's ex-girlfriend?); piles question on top of question (Could David be a murderer? Is that really his former lover's voice on his answering machine?); and fairly races to a natural and satisfying conclusion. Following David on his slightly surreal odyssey, never quite sure whether we should completely trust him, we sink into the novel, losing touch with our own world as we fall deeper into Pike's. Thriller fans who crave that hypnotic effect will find everything they need right here. David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Christopher Pike, the bestselling author of the Remember Me and The Last Vampire series, has more than fifty novels to his credit. His previous adult novels include Sati, The Season of Passage, and The Cold One. Pike lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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