Picture, if you will, leaving on urgent personal business out of town with your girlfriend, only to return and find everyone in the city is gone. Vanished. Disappeared. What do you do? Panic? Correct. This is the scenario from Christopher Pike's latest book, Whisper of Death.

Roxanne and her boyfriend Paul Pointzel, nicknamed Pepper, return to a dead world. The rest of the inhabitants of Salem, Arizona vanish overnight, along with everyone else in the world. The only people left are three others from Salem. First they find Stand Reese (actually, he finds them), the short chubby genius who always keeps his cool under fire. Next, they find psychotic and dangerous Helter Skater, whom the town nicknamed Helter Skelter. He is robbing the now-empty bank of all its loot. Then they find the stuck-up, snobbish little Leslie Belle.

The only disappointment with this book is the ending, which everyone seems to hate, but I won't give it away. The rest of this book, however, would receive an A-.

This book, and others Mr. Pike writes, puts a mysterious twist on teens' normal lives in suburbia by adding death, a touch of sex, kidnapping, comedy, and just a little more death.

Look out, teens of America, the strange world of Christopher Pike might just be something real happening in your town right now. n