Spellbound

We decided to add more Pike to our re-readathon this year, and Marian suggested this book, which I actually didn't read as a kid. I've enjoyed our sojourn through The Last Vampire series (at least mostly) and Pike can write a great read, so I was 100% on board. Unfortunately, this book shows just how early it was written in his career, and while the actual whodunit is pretty cool, the execution was pretty sloppy, IMO.

As suggested by the back blurb, the main characters in this book are Cindy and Alex Jones, who are a senior and a sophomore in high school. Cindy is pretty and popular and belongs to the song team (whatever that is, though per context something akin to a cheerleader), while Alex is a very intense cross-country runner. Their show more parents own the local hardware store and work all hours of the day, making them conveniently absent for most of this book.

Cindy has just started dating Jason Whitfield, the handsome quarterback of the football team and the suspected killer of his previous girlfriend, Karen Holly. The two went up to Crystal Falls in nearby Castle Park, but only one returned: Jason, who ran for the police when he discovered the mutilated body of his girlfriend. Jason swears he didn't have anything to do with killing her, but there is a lot of gossip going around Timber, Wyoming, led by a muckraking reporter called Kent Cooke, who writes absurd newspaper articles that are somehow taken seriously (and serve to info-dump A LOT into this story). Cindy doesn't believe Jason killed Karen, but she's one of the only ones on his side.

Karen's cousin Pam is Cindy's best friend; Pam couldn't stand Karen. Pam's ex-boyfriend Ray is a track teammate of Alex's. Ray and Alex are in competition for the hand of the fair Joni Harper, recently arrived in Timber to live with an aunt after losing both of her parents. And Bala the magical negro is the houseguest of Pam, a foreign exchange student from Nigeria who speaks perfect English and is so strikingly handsome that both Pam and Cindy are interested in him.

Three weeks after Karen's death, Jason suggests that he, Cindy, Alex, Joni, Bala, and Pam return to the falls so he can prove his case. They all agree (mistake #1), but while they are up there, Cindy falls into the raging river and is almost thrown over the falls. Bala saves her, even though Jason wanted the honors and grumbles all the way home. Jason takes Cindy to his place and tries to paw at her even though she has a sore ankle; when Cindy rejects him, he blows up at her for being a tease. Seeing Jason's temper in this light has started planting seeds of doubt in Cindy about his ability to kill someone in a fit of rage.

Alex, meanwhile, is spending a lot of time with Joni, who very clearly is Not Like Other Girls. She always sounds sick, hikes up the falls barefoot, and is out of school for a week after the incident, even though she was little more than a bystander. Alex fancies himself in love, especially after Joni gives him some tips to improve his race times.

Bala, meanwhile, learns of Karen's death from one of Kent Cooke's ridiculous articles and presses Cindy for information about the details. Cooke himself shows up at Cindy's door the day before the first hearing for Jason, wanting information on the little incident up at the falls. This stokes Cindy's doubts, so she returns to the scene of the accident and realizes that it was no accident at all - it really looks like Jason tried to kill her! She's set to be a character witness at the preliminary hearing and basically blows EVERYBODY out of the water when she explains what happened to her. Jason admits that he set her up, but only because he wanted to make the heroic rescue that may wipe suspicion from everyone's minds about Karen's death. Cindy basically tells him to kick rocks at this point, which - good for her! She is definitely pretty damn kickass for a late 80s YA heroine.

After Ray turns up dead in a similar fashion to Karen, Bala believes he knows what's really going on and goes after it, barely surviving his own encounter with the deadly force. While he is in the hospital, he info-dumps the truth to Cindy: his grandfather the shaman had switched the spirits of Joni Harper and a vulture, but wasn't able to switch them back. The vulture (with Joni's soul) was immediately killed, but the body (with the vulture's soul) survived, until mysterious deaths very similar to Karen's started happening all around it. Joni's brother firmly believes that Joni is the one who killed all these people - including her parents - and Bala now believes it, too, when he pieces together the timeline of when Joni arrived in Timber and when the mysterious teen deaths started to occur.

So now Cindy is super worried about Alex, whom she can't get hold of, and whom Bala assures her is in certain danger because of his attachment to Joni. She decides she has to go after Joni herself to save her brother, and gathers up some very handy things (including her pet wolf-dog and a rifle) and returns to the falls, which are apparently Joni's hunting grounds. She confronts Joni after finding Alex's jacket floating in the nearby river and ultimately defeats her by forcing the vulture's soul into the body of Alex's ancient, blind parrot. Joni's body drops over, not a mark on it, and Alex reappears, having survived going over the falls, albeit with a broken leg.

There is a short epilogue where we learn that the survivors are attending the funerals of Ray and Joni, and that Bala is returning to Nigeria to repair his relationship with his grandfather. The end.

Now, as I said, the actual idea of souls getting trapped in bodies and going on rampages is pretty cool, but the more you think about it, the more things don't make sense. If killing a person to basically suck in their life force is only really effective when Joni kills someone who is attached to her, why did she originally attack Karen, of all people? Why did she go down for a week after Cindy's incident in the river? How in THE HELL did Joni and Bala end up in nowheresville Wyoming? The fact that they originally met at all was incredulous enough, but Bala tracking her down as he did is just beyond my suspension of disbelief. And then there's all the threads that are left hanging. What happened to Jason? What about Kent Cooke's ridiculous tirade against Jason's father the mayor? What about Joni's brother, stuck in the mental asylum in England? It's like now that Cindy and Alex know the truth, nothing else matters.

As Pike gains more experience in his writing, he is more careful to wrap up all of his storylines, or to just not introduce superfluous characters at all. The whole Kent Cooke thing could've been dropped entirely, IMO, and nothing of value would've been lost.

Still, Cindy is pretty kickass, which counts for a lot considering this was originally published in 1988. show less

Pike at his best: cunning and creative. I try to guess what the end will be but I don't find out until he leads me there personally.

It starts a little slow and the mystery doesn't seem that urgent or strong until later in the second half, but meanwhile I had some good writing to keep me focused, an interesting circle of friends whose different personalities sometimes complement, sometimes clash. There isn't a primary main character but head hopping is kept to a minimum. There is a false death scare or two, but it's forgivable since it gave me my happy ending.

I didn't guess what the villain would be, or who, until later. Even when the villain is revealed, the unveiling of how the villain is accomplishing the deaths is unique. Where Pike show more comes up with this stuff, I have no idea, his imagination seems endless at times.

The ending pages had a neat twist as well to give a nod of the ironic hat. Fans of Pike will probably enjoy this one. show less

A re-read mystery from 1988. Brother & sister (Alex/Cindy) are drawn into a strange mix of murder, mysticism, relationships, exchange students, & strange occurrences at their high school. Cindy's new boyfriend is accused of murdering his former girlfriend, Alex's new squeeze isn't all that she seems, & the new guy in school has some secrets of his own. Decent mystery but heads to the cheesy supernatural aspects.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It started out a bit rough, but ended up getting better.

I haven't read this book in a long time, but I know it's one of my chilhood favorites and my taste has matured, but hasn't really changed. I remember it scaring the crap out of me when I was 13, and that's what I like.

A good Young Adult Thriller.

They found Karen Holly dead in the mountain stream and thought Jason had murdered her in a fit of rage. Now Jason has a new girlfriend, and together with some new kids in town is returning to the place where Karen was killed. Some will die. The others will come face to face with a horror beyond imagining.