Blind Mirror

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. (May 21)