History Creator / ChristopherPike

** Lara in ''Slumber Party'' starts to believe someone in their group is either pyrokinetic or if it's the case of spontaneous combustion, in order to explain how these fires keep occurring. [[spoiler: It turns out she's wrong on both accounts, and Nell was secretly goading her beliefs just to screw with her.]]

* OhCrapThereAreFanficsOfUs:
** In ''Master of Murder'', an author names his characters after his friends, and then the fanfics become canon (i.e., they happen in RealLife). Hilarity doesn't exactly ensue, being a Pike novel.
** In ''Whisper of Death'', the main characters discover that a dead classmate had written stories about them using different names, and each one dies as the characters in the story.

* Really700YearsOld: The crews of ''The Traveler'' and ''The Pandora'' in ''The Starlight Crystal'', by means of traveling at the speed of light and cryogenic freezing respectively, live so long into the future that the Earth is rendered a lifeless, radioactive wasteland, and by the time they return the radiation has since abated. [[spoiler: Paige Christian, however, lives so long that she witnesses all life in the universe die out, then its rebirth. She then returns to Earth under a different identity, right at the same time her previous self was planning on leaving Earth to become a member of ''The Traveler''.]]
** This is a subversion, though, as the reason the crew of ''The Traveler'' remains so young isn't because of extended immortality, but because of how fast the ship is travelling, they don't age inside at the same rate as the universe outside is. A week to those in the ship is really two hundred years outside.

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: Not prophecy per say, but the events that occur in ''The Starlight Crystal'' are revealed to have been set up by none other than [[spoiler: Paige Christian herself, who lives past the death of the universe and well into its rebirth. She discovers upon experience that she was really the woman who convinced her to visit a nearby park, where she would meet the love of her life, and was also responsible for creating the alien race that would wipe out all life on Earth, on purpose.]]

* WhatTheHellHero: While she never gets called on it, Ilonka in ''The Midnight Club'' breaks up Kevin and his girlfriend Kathy by making it clear to her that Kevin is in a ''hospice'', not a ''hospital'', and is not going to get better. The girl leaves the hospice in tears without seeing Kevin. In all honesty, this was out of wanting Kevin for herself. This later gets subverted, as Ilonka feels conflicting emotions of guilt towards her cruelty towards Kathy and her love towards Kevin. Everyone who knows about what happened felt Kathy deserved to be set straight sooner than later.

* ArcWords: The term ''starlight crystal'' is the title of one of Pike's novels (but it isn't used anywhere in story), the title of a story in the last ''Remember Me'' book, and is a term Sati uses to describe herself as in ''Sati''.

* BadFuture: ''The Eternal Enemy'' and ''See You Later''.
* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler: Whisper of Death]].

* BittersweetEnding: ''Monster''. [[spoiler: Angela Warner has fully become one of the monsters, but has retained enough sense to know that "people are not for eating", and manages to destroy the lake which is the cause of the transformations by causing an oil spill that becomes a fire.]]
** This is actually a reoccurring trend in Pike's books. Usually, the heroine will wind up dying or suffering AFateWorseThanDeath to achieve some greater good.

* BuryYourGays: ''The Midnight Club'' and ''Sati''.

* ChivalrousPervert: A favourite of Pike's in his novels: the ''Final Friends'' series (Bubba); ''Monster'' (Kevin); ''The Eternal Enemy'' (Ed).

* DreamLand: Seen multiple times in ''Remember Me'' when Shari attempts to invade the dreams of her friends so as to find out which one of them killed her. Also, the moment when she saves her brother's life, which she had [[DreamingOfThingsToCome dreamed about beforehand]].
** Also used in ''Last Act''.
* DreamWithinADream: ''Magic Fire''

* FakingTheDead: ''Falling'', [[spoiler: ''Chain Letter'' (Neal), ''Slumber Party'' (Nicole/Celeste)]], ''Weekend'' [[spoiler: (Bert)]], ''Gimme a Kiss'' [[spoiler: (Jane), ''Scavenger Hunt'' (Joe/Tom)]], ''Fall Into Darkness'' [[spoiler: (Ann)]].
* FetusTerrible: ''The Grave'' was about a young woman who is impregnated by one of TheUndead and killed by being dumped in a freezer. She becomes one of the undead herself and it is revealed that the fetus she is carrying [[spoiler: was specifically bred by a MadScientist to become the antichrist. But by the end it's revealed the MadScientist has failed, the FetusTerrible being more a balance between good and evil who destroys the MadScientist and goes on his merry way.]] Oh, and this book was aimed at teenagers. Really.
** See also ''The Cold One.''

* GoneHorriblyRight: ''Gimme A Kiss''.
* GoneHorriblyWrong: ''Weekend''. [[spoiler: The poisoned beer was meant for Lena, not Robin.]]
** [[spoiler: In as much as it was meant for anyone. IIRC, if someone hadn't walked in to take the drink while she was still staring at it, she probably wouldn't have given it to anyone. A moment's mad impulse gone horribly wrong.]]
*** Correct. [[spoiler: The culprit put the poison in a glass impulsively during a moment of anger, and when she was walked in on, poured in beer to disguise the smell. Had the other someone not picked up the poisoned beer when the "culprit" had her back turned, she more than likely would have disposed of the poison safely.]]
* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Played with in ''Whisper of Death''.
* GoodScarsEvilScars: Used in ''Slumber Party''. [[spoiler: Nell's scars are only on her face, and aren't as severe as Nicole's. Nicole's face is bare of any scars, but the damage is more prevalent on her torso and lower body. She doesn't even have nipples or a belly button anymore, and alludes that the damage is much worse below the belt. Nell is the truly bloodthirsty one, whereas Nicole does a HeelFaceTurn because Nell had been lying to her about the accident.]]
** Shena in ''The Star Group'' is introduced with a badly scarred face after getting sprayed with battery acid which was not immediately wiped off. [[spoiler: Gale did this on purpose to set up Shena as a scapegoat when she finally made her move.]]
* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler: The Immortal]] and [[spoiler: The Blind Mirror]] use this trope as a twist - without the transferred soul initially remembering their true identity.
** In ''Spellbound'', [[spoiler: how Josies' soul came to be infused with that of a vulture.]]

* HannibalLecture: in ''Falling'' [[spoiler: the Acid Killer, Gene Banks, has a way of turning the tables on FBI agent Kelly Feinman. Even after Kelly has caught and made him a quadriplegic, she finds herself drawn to him and the revelations he provides her about her character.]] Pike has stated he owes a debt to ''Silence of the Lambs'', and a character in ''Falling'' name-checks Hannibal Lecter.

* IllGirl: Robin in ''Weekend'', most of the female characters in ''The Midnight Club''. [[spoiler: Robin gets better, two of the girls from ''The Midnight Club'' don't.]]

** Played straight with Mitch in ''The Lost Mind''. He's Jennifer's BastardBoyfriend, as well as a chronic gambler who uses Jen to cover his debts with about as much compassion as a rock. When he comes to Jen's house to get the money he needs to pay off a loan shark, his next move is to strip completely naked and sprawl himself out on her bed, thinking some quick sex will help her relax after Crystal's death is made public. Jen is... less than pleased.
** Subverted with Tony in ''Chain Letter''. People are always telling him what an amazing football player he is and he's the best of Grant High's team, but he actually hates football and doesn't get along with his teammates because they have nothing in coming. Unfortunately, he realizes that he ''does'' have something of an ego, and said ego blinded him to Neil's feelings because he's so used to enabling Neil's HeroWorship.
* KillItWithFire: [[spoiler: The end of ''Monster'' and ''The Star Group''. Angela Warner kills her turned classmates by blowing up her house, then after she fully loses her human appearance, retains enough sense of self to cause an oil spill into the lake responsible for the transformations and sets it on fire. Shena in ''The Star Group'' used her pryokinesis to destroy Daniel's house after Gale had forced Daniel to kill himself. Shena savored hearing Gale scream from inside.]]

* LotusEaterMachine: ''Magic Fire''
* LoveMakesYouEvil: ''Last Act'' and ''Remember Me''.

* MythologyGag: In ''The Star Group'', main character Daniel mentions he's writing a story where the protagonist has just set a giant fire in Los Angeles. He's essentially writing ''Magic Fire''.
** Roxanne and Pepper see ''The Season of Passage'' in ''Whisper of Death'', Shari begins writing ''The Starlight Crystal'', and ''The Listeners'' is mentioned in the second part of the "Collect Call" short story.

* OhCrapThereAreFanficsOfUs: Used in ''Master of Murder''. An author names his characters after his friends, and then the fanfics become canon (i.e., they happen in RealLife). Hilarity doesn't exactly ensue, being a Pike novel.
** Used again in ''Whisper of Death'', when the main characters discover that a dead classmate had written stories about them using different names, and each one dies as the characters in the story.

** ''Magic Fire'', obviously.

* PoorCommunicationKills: ''Last Act'' and ''Sati''.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: In both ''Last Act'' and ''Monster''.

* RecycledScript: ''Weekend'' and ''Slumber Party'' are both about a group of friends spending the weekend in some isolated location, and both groups share a dark secret from their past involving a former friend who was badly injured. The villain of the book is revealed to be someone out for revenge.

* TheScapegoat: [[spoiler: Gale set Shena up as this by deliberately scarring her and feigning innocence. She then set Sal up as Jimmy's murderer by saying so to the police, leading to Sal getting shot in the back.]]

* SetRightWhatOnceWasWrong: ''See You Later'' and ''The Eternal Enemy''.

* StoryWithinAStory: Used numerous times in some of Pike's novels. ''Weekend'', ''Last Act'', ''The Midnight Club'', ''Whisper of Death'', ''Remember Me 3'', ''Master of Murder'', and ''Road to Nowhere''.

* ThisIsMyStory: Shari in ''Remember Me'', particularly the last lines of the book.
** Rela in ''The Eternal Enemy'', Paige in ''The Starlight Crystal'', and Roxanne in ''Whisper of Death''.
* TokenShipping: Sal and Terri in ''The Star Group''.

See ''[[{{Literature/Witch}} Witch]]'' and ''Literature/TheLastVampire'' for his works.

!!Tropes in his works:

* {{Badass}}: Sita, protagonist of ''The Last Vampire'' series, routinely slaughters small armies single-handedly, with anything from her personal collection of assault weapons to her bare hands.
** However, as the series goes on Sita's Badass-ness gets a tad silly. What use is a character who can take on anything and brags about it endlessly? Especially with how ineffectual most of the villains are.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: ''The Last Vampire'' series explains that {{God}} created evil, because without it people were complacent and couldn't become truly good.

* BringMyRedJacket: Occurs in [[{{Literature/Witch}} Witch]]. Julia has a vision of [[spoiler:Jim dying in a gas station, and his red jacket is very prominant in the vision. Unable to deter him from going into the gas station, Julia makes him change into a white jacket. How that will help is questionable, but hey, it's a Pike book. Anyway, Jim is shot, and his bleeding turns the white jacket red, fulfilling both points of the vision.]] Doesn't fate suck?

* ChivalrousPervert: A favourite of Pike's in his novels: the ''Final Friends'' series (Bubba); ''Monster'' (Kevin); [[{{Literature/Witch}} Witch]] (Randy); ''The Eternal Enemy'' (Ed).

* DefrostingIceQueen: Julia's aunt in ''Witch'' is presented as a very cold and stern woman, very unlike Julia's mother. By the end of the novel, she's softened considerably.

* ExpressDelivery: Occurs in ''The Grave'' and ''The Last Vampire 4: Phantom.''

** Subverted in ''The Last Vampire'' series. [[spoiler: Kalika is, like her namesake goddess Kali, a True Neutral who is woefully misunderstood by everyone, including Sita.]]

** Averted with Randy in ''Witch'' and Jimmy in ''The Star Group''. Randy has jerkish moments but he's an okay guy, and Jimmy's pretty nice too, but he has issues with Gale over her scarring.

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: In ''The Last Vampire'' series, old vampires (5000 years or so) can walk about in sunlight; they don't have fangs and must manually cut open a vein in order to drink blood; and Alisa/Sita in particular can [[spoiler:survive a stake in the heart; and is a close personal friend of Krishna, as the vampires of this series have a connection with Hinduism.]]
** In ''The Season of Passage'' and ''Monster'' the [[spoiler:vampires originate from Mars, people on Earth being infected by a virus from that planet.]]

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: In ''Witch''. Julia's heart and mind are clouded by thoughts of revenge after Scott is gravely injured.

* SoftWater: Subverted in ''The Last Vampire'' series. When someone gets thrown off a 10-story(ish) building into a deep swimming pool, they die. Effectively being pulpified in fact. The thrower, apparently finding this amusing, proceeds to get rid of all her opposition in the same way. The main character only survives because she's a vampire, though she's still very badly injured.

* VampireFiction: ''The Last Vampire'' series.
* VegetarianVampire: In ''The Last Vampire'' series Alisa/Sita will drink the blood of people she has to kill because, well, why let it go to waste? But, she has the power to control people and wipe their memories, and will avoid killing them if possible - drinking only some of their blood, then wiping their memory. In ''Monster'' most [[spoiler:of the vampires kill for blood. However Angela Warner, by the end of the novel, learns to avoid humans and will only kill animals.]]

* YourVampiresSuck: In ''The Last Vampire'' Sita possesses few of the traditional weaknesses. She sometimes has the "what about crosses, garlic, running water, coffin?" conversation with humans she reveals herself to. She can even stand the sunlight, though she explains she couldn't really do this until she'd aged a few THOUSAND years. Vampires in this series were first created when a demon (a yakshini) was summoned and possessed the corpse of a baby who was still inside its dead mother's womb.

** Happens to the Caretaker twice in ''Chain Letter 2: The Ancient Evil''. [[spoiler: Joan's task is to give Tony a loaded gun and Brenda's severed finger. Tony's task to blow Alison's brains out. What the Caretaker did not expect would be that A: Alison would take the choice from Tony and shoot ''herself'' so he wouldn't have to, and B: that Joan would give Tony a gun filled with ''blanks''.]]

* XanatosGambit: The premise of the original ''Chain Letter'' and the Caretaker's overall plan for the group. As it's pointed out, the seven kids can either go through with the tasks and do something degrading and humiliating, or they can be punished if they don't follow through. And if they try to tell anyone about the man they killed that last summer, the Caretaker will expose them all, but even telling someone about the man would have the same end result. They're screwed no matter what they do.

* OutGambitted: Used in ''Weekend''. [[spoiler: Lena purposefully gave the wrong date on the invitations but made sure those who were at the party where Robin drank insect poison came, with the intent to discover who actually gave Robin the poison. She drugs them, locks them in a room (herself included) filled with venom-less rattlesnakes, and uses a recording of her dubbed voice to interrogate them. She hadn't expected on A: Bert turning up alive after everyone believed he was killed in the garage explosion, and B: the group bringing Flynn, who reveals himself to be Robin's biological brother Michael. He planned to figure out who poisoned Robin himself, but at the same time to determine if he felt comfortable enough to give Robin one of his kidneys for a transplant. He wasn't going to just give an organ to a complete stranger, especially a sister he never even knew existed until just recently.]]

* JerkJock: Averted with Randy in ''Witch'' and Jimmy in ''The Star Group''. Randy has jerkish moments but he's an okay guy, and Jimmy's pretty nice too, but he has issues with Gale over her scarring.

* ParodySue: The character of Melissa in the ''Final Chance'' play from ''Last Act''. [[spoiler: She's basically Susan Trels' perfected memory of herself.]]

* LoveMakesYouEvil: ''Last Act''.
** Also ''Remember Me''.

* OutGambitted: Used in ''Weekend''. [[spoiler: Lena purposefully gave the wrong date on the invitations but made sure those who were at the party where her sister drank insect poison came, with the intent to discover who actually gave Robin the poison. She drugs them, locks them in a room filled with venom-less rattlesnakes (herself included), and uses a recording of her dubbed voice to interrogate them. She hadn't expected on A: Bert turning up alive and B: them bringing Flynn, who reveals himself to be Robin's biological brother Michael. He planned to figure out who poisoned Robin himself, but at the same time whether or not Robin actually deserved one of his kidneys for a transplant, as he wasn't about to give one without learning if she was a good or bad person.]]

* PlayingWithFire: Lara in ''Slumber Party'' starts to believe that someone in their group is either a pyrokinetic, or it's the case of spontaneous combustion, in order to explain how these fires keep occurring. [[spoiler: It turns out she's wrong, and Nell was secretly goading her beliefs just to screw with her.]]

* SelfServingMemory: In ''Last Act''. [[spoiler: ''Final Chance'' was nothing more than Susan Trels warped memory of what her friendship with Rindy and Clyde was like. Clyde himself calls Susan out on it by saying her play was nothing but garbage compared to how things actually happened. This contributes to Susan's VillainousBreakdown.]]

* SilentScapegoat: [[spoiler: Rindy in ''Last Act''.]]

* TheVamp: A few of Pike's female characters are written as having an impressive sensuality while not being total knockouts in terms of physical appearance. Notable examples include Jessa in ''Magic Fire'' and Gale in ''The Star Group''.

* WhatTheHellHero: While she never gets called on it, Ilonka in ''The Midnight Club'' breaks up Kevin and his girlfriend Kathy by making it clear to her that Kevin is in a ''hospice'', not a ''hospital'', and is not going to get better. The girl leaves the hospice in tears without seeing Kevin. In all honesty, this was out of wanting Kevin for herself.
** Actually, this may be a subversion, as Ilonka feels conflicting emotions of guilt towards her cruelty towards Kathy and her love towards Kevin. Everyone who knows about what happened felt Kathy deserved to be set straight sooner than later.

* {{Antivillain}}: Mary Blanc in ''Monster''. She murders three people with a shotgun and intended to kill more at a party. Mary does this because she knew that the three in question were transforming into inhuman monsters that devour human flesh, and had already killed a small group of people before the book began. Crosses into IdiotBall territory when you realize Mary could've just waited until they were alone instead of killing them in front of dozens of witnesses.

* LaserGuidedKarma: Discussed in ''The Midnight Club''. Anya seems to believe the cancer which is slowly killing her and has already claimed her right leg is punishment for destroying her relationship with her boyfriend Bill by sleeping with another guy when Bill did nothing to deserve it. What adds to this belief is the fact that the clay statute of two lovers Anya had made for Bill was broken by him when he found Anya and the other guy in bed. Only the right leg was broken.

** Roxanne and Pepper see ''The Season of Passage'' at the movies, Shari begins writing ''The Starlight Crysta'', and ''The Listeners'' is mentioned in the second part of the "Collect Call" short story.

*** Correct. [spoiler: The culprit put the poison in a glass impulsively during a moment of anger, and when she was walked in on, poured in beer to disguise the smell. Had the other someone not picked up the poisoned beer when the "culprit" had her back turned, she more than likely would have disposed of the poison safely.]]

** ''Gimme a Kiss'' and ''Fall into Darkness'' both feature a girl who decides to set up someone else for her murder, and then things [[WentHorriblyWrong go horribly wrong]] and people start dying for real. Partially [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the implication that Ann, the girl in ''Fall into Darkness'', has read ''Gimme a Kiss'' and got the idea from there.

* ThanatosGambit: ''Fall in Darkness''. [[spoiler: Ann fakes her death to get revenge on Sharon for her brother's suicide.]]

Christopher Pike is an American author of, primarily, teen thriller and horror titles. He was most popular in the 1980s and 1990s, moving on to publishing adult works in the 2000s. 'Christopher Pike' is the pseudonym of Kevin [=McFadden=], born November 12, 1954.

Not to be confused with the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' character, although that's where he got the name.

** However, as the series goes on Sita's Badass-ness gets a tad silly. What use is a character who can take on anything and brags about it endlessly?
*** That's the point. Each time she faces a more lethal villain. It's kind of cool that she TakesALevelInBadass with each book.

** Shena in ''The Star Group'' is introduced with a badly scarred face after a car crash resulted in her getting scarred with battery acid.

* TheMole: In ''The Star Group'' one of the teenagers is actually planning to kill the rest.

* HannibalLecture: in ''Falling'' [[spoiler: the Acid Killer, Gene Banks, has a way of turning the tables on FBI agent Kelly Feinman. Even after Kelly has caught and made him a quadriplegic, she finds herself drawn to him and the revelations he provides her about her character.]] Pike has stated he owes a debt to ''Silence of the Lambs'', and even a character in ''Falling'' name-checks Hannibal Lecter.

----
!!YMMV Tropes in his works:
* CriticalResearchFailure: ''The Secret of Ka'' portrays Istanbul as the capital of Turkey, which it [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara isn't]].
* EvilIsSexy: One of the antagonist vampires in ''The Last Vampire'' series has a face full of acne scars.
* [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitch]]: ''Last Act''. [[spoiler: Susan. She wrote a play under an anagram of her name, artificially aged it, hid it in a secondhand bookstore, bought it, and then proposed it to be the next school play. She then successfully tricked Melanie into becoming friends with her so she could get her involved in the play, gave her the role of the main character, and had her kill Rindy opening night, all the while Rindy realized what was going on and genuinely pleaded for her life to Susan while everyone thought she was just acting.]]
* MoralEventHorizon: ''Chain Letter 2'' is all about invoking this trope. Each of the protagonists is given a task to complete which will push them over the horizon. If the task is not completed, the character in question will be killed, effectively giving each of them the choice between death and damnation. The tasks given ranged from the truly horrific ([[spoiler: Kip's was to set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]]) to the FelonyMisdemeanor? ([[spoiler: Brenda cutting off her own finger and delivering it to one of the other characters was definitely a moment of {{Squick}}, but it's hard to see it as something worthy of eternal damnation]]).
** It wasn't so much about "eternal damnation" in the usual sense as it was about what would be ''personally'' damning to each person who had to complete the task. Kip's task was to [[spoiler: set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]], but this would be personally damning because [[spoiler: Kip loves his younger sister like fury, so Kip rather angrily refuses to harm the person he loves most. So the killer sets Kip on fire instead, but Kip's death is evidently preferable to what the killer was asking him to do.]] Meanwhile, [[spoiler: Brenda is a person who loves her own body and her own physical beauty and attractiveness more than anything else. So cutting off a finger would be personally damning to her, but unlike Kip, Brenda is afraid of death more than she's afraid of disfiguring the thing she loves most, so Brenda gets drunk enough to cut off her finger without too much pain.]]
* SuetifulAllAlong
* UnfortunateImplications: In both ''The Midnight Club'' and ''Sati'', Pike has written two homosexual males who die of AIDS.
** Flynn's actions in ''Weekend''. He hides his identity partly so he can decide whether or not Robin deserves a kidney. If you analyse this at all it's pretty horrible to insinuate yourself into a relative's life so you can pass judgement on whether or not they deserve to die young.

See [[{{Literature/Witch}} Witch]] and TheLastVampire

* CriticalResearchFailure: ''The Secret of Ka'' portrays Istanbul as the capital of Turkey, which it ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara isn't]].

* EvilIsSexy: One of the antagonist vampires in ''The Last Vampire'' series has a face full of acne scars.

** This Troper actually read that book as a child, believe it or not! It wasn't so much about "eternal damnation" in the usual sense as it was about what would be ''personally'' damning to each person who had to complete the task. Kip's task was to [[spoiler: set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]], but this would be personally damning because [[spoiler: Kip loves his younger sister like fury, so Kip rather angrily refuses to harm the person he loves most. So the killer sets Kip on fire instead, but Kip's death is evidently preferable to what the killer was asking him to do.]] Meanwhile, [[spoiler: Brenda is a person who loves her own body and her own physical beauty and attractiveness more than anything else. So cutting off a finger would be personally damning to her, but unlike Kip, Brenda is afraid of death more than she's afraid of disfiguring the thing she loves most, so Brenda gets drunk enough to cut off her finger without too much pain.]]