Christopher Pike: "Die Softly"

Title: Die Softly [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Christopher Pike [Facebook | Goodreads]
Genres: Thriller/Mystery
Year: 1991
Age: 12+
Stars: 2/5
Pros: Believable depiction of a male teen...up to a point. Photography makes for an original plot device.
Cons: Unlikeable characters. Not particularly engaging prose. Some paragraphs could have benefited more editing.
WARNING! Some gruesome deaths. Sex is mentioned/implied; drugs are heavily featured.
Will appeal to: Those who love a classic teen thriller '90s-style...only a lot darker than average.

Blurb: Herb just wanted to photograph the cheerleaders in the school showers. He planted his camera high in the corner where no one could see it, and rigged it to a special homemade timer. He hoped that by Friday night he would have an exciting roll of film to develop. But a girl dies Friday afternoon. On the surface it appears to be nothing more than a tragic car accident. But when Herb finally does collect his roll of film, he develops a picture that shows a shadowy figure sneaking up on the girl who has died with a baseball bat. It makes Herb wonder if the girl was dead long before the car accident. But unfortunately for Herb, he doesn't wonder if the murderer knows he took the picture. (Goodreads excerpt)

Review: Well, yes, this isn't one of my favourite Pike books - obviously. I'll state my reasons for that in a moment. But one thing needs to be said in advance...even when YA was still in its infancy, Pike never shunned the darkest angles of human psyche, nor the most gruesome outcomes of human emotions. In a way, this book is mature YA, right because of that. On the other hand, it's still a kid of the '90s, in what it lacks sophistication and conciseness. The best teen novels out there nowadays would never spend pages describing the wiring of a camera to a tape recorder and their location on a ledge, or the development of a roll of film. Not cool ;).
But my main problems with this book are the characters and the tone. I'll get to the characters in a few lines...but I'm starting with the tone. The story is told in third person by Herb, an eighteen year old "nobody" (that's how he thinks of himself) with one single talent - photography. The chapters alternate between the past, when death struck Herb's small clique of friends and acquaintances, and the present ("In the End"), when Herb is on the phone with Sergeant Fitzsimmons, recounting the events. The book ends with an epilogue. Now, Pike's typical style is made of short sentences, on the descriptive side. While it works for his most interesting stories (especially those told in first person), it tends to get a bit dull and simplistic here. I get it that we are in Herb's mind, so the writing style probably mimics his mental processes quite accurately, but it also sets a flat tone on the whole. [...]

Next, the characters. It honestly sounds like Pike tried his best in order to populate this book with unpleasant ones. And I don't mean the usual "characters you love to hate". Either their physical aspect or their personality traits (and in some cases, both at once) seem to have been designed to distance them from the reader. It probably adds to believability, but it's also overdone - and a bit distasteful. E.g.: Herb: "His brown hair was long, unkempt, and he couldn't run a comb through it without tearing clumps out"; Sammie: "She dressed like an ex-convict, a male ex-convict [...] Somewhere inside, hidden beneath the rolls of fat, was the real Sammie [...] She had bangs that had grown into tangled strings that spent most of their time collecting sweat". [Note about the "rolls of fat": I honestly don't think that the author meant to lash out at an overweight person, but his choice of words was unfortunate at best...]. Also, Herb is a believable character in terms of your hormone-loaded, averagely-brained teenage loser...but when he obstinately refuses to see what's in front of him, or tries to make excuses for unwarranted things...well, I tend to lose my patience just a little *rolls eyes*. Of course, the whole book has its foundation in Herb's, um, naïveté (and hormones). But still.
On the other hand, Herb succeeds in framing the killer in the end, though...well, let's say he doesn't get to celebrate this particular event. I like what Pike did with the ending - another instance of how he isn't afraid to make a startling move.
Mention of honour: Herb does have a mother who cares for him and tries to keep him out of trouble. With very little results, but not for lack of trying. At least someone still has functioning parents (or one of them) in teen lit...
Well, if you like your YA dark, with strong images and mature themes (see the "WARNING!" section), this one can be your cup of tea; on the other hand, you have to put up with the problems I pointed out, and they might taunt your reading experience. If such issues tend to bother you, then it's a case of having to weight your options...

For more Christopher Pike books click here.

A more recent and apter (not to mention, less cheesy) Paperback cover...
...though the figure with the baseball bat shouldn't look like a grown man