• Fiction.

By Charlie Huston. Ballantine, $21.95.

Grade: B+

Plot in a nutshell: Set in the spring of 1983 in a San Francisco suburb, this charged and frightening story follows four young friends as they leave their innocence behind. George, his younger brother Andy, and Paul and Hector spend their time working on their bikes, stealing cigarettes and trying to sort out their feelings toward girls. Andy is something of a savant. He has been skipping grades and has caught up academically with his older brother and his friends, but he's still a boy, and when he allows his bike to be stolen, it opens up an adventure for the four friends that will propel them like a rogue wave into adulthood.

Trying to recover the missing bike leads the friends into a house that turns out to be a meth lab. When one of the boys steals a bag of crank, the stage is set for violence and loss of innocence on a grand scale. It also opens up long- sealed cracks in the faade of their town. While these young men learn some nasty lessons about the nature of evil, the adults in their lives realize that the lessons continue for them, as well.

Pros: Huston has developed a reputation for his own brand of noir fiction, by turns side-splittingly funny and gruesomely violent and repugnant. Any male over the age of 20 will recognize elements of adolescence they had unconsciously buried - and will cringe or howl at the accuracy of this rendering of his childhood.

Cons: Sometimes Huston goes too far. While 15-year-old boys will invariably do things their parents would disapprove of, some of the tortures and hideousness that rains down on these characters would likely get them grounded until they're old enough to collect Social Security.

Sample of prose: "It's not like he's trying to be different, like he wants to be weird. He just is. Not like it's easy being this way. He'd rather be like George. He'd rather be like his Dad. He'd rather be like anyone else. But he's not. Because no one else is like him. No one else is this weird.

"And that's just the weird stuff people know about. They don't know about the stuff inside his head."

Final word: Parents who refuse to think about the world in which their children live will be repulsed by this book. Others might just find a glimmer of hope by its end.