The Photographer

The high school's most popular girls are suffering from a mysterious disease and only Megan knows that nerdy Derrick is responsible for their illness. Derrick has come to despise the pretty girls he photographs for the school paper. Driven berserk by snubs both real and imagined, Derrick invents a camera that has the power to take life. After a series of tedious adventures, Megan succeeds in ridding her town of the satanic shutterbug. This comes as no surprise, for the odds are stacked heavily in Megan's favor: not only is she smarter than almost everybody in the book, she's a psychic to boot. So much is spelled out at the beginning that there is little to tempt the reader to finish this predictable exercise in low-grade horror. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)