Stephen King - Full Dark, No Stars

[dem bones]

Stephen King - Full Dark, No Stars (Hodder & Stoughton, 2011, originally 2010)

Cover photograph (Jim and Jamie Dutcher/Getty Images

1922
Big Driver
Fair Extension
A Good Marriage
Under The Weather * (New story: didn't appear in 2010 Hodder edition)

Afterword

Blurb:

What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?

For a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.

A cozy mystery writer plots a savage revenge after a brutal encounter with a stranger.

Harry Streeter gets the chance to cure himself from illness — if he agrees to impose misery on an old rival.

And Darcy Anderson discovers a box containing her husband's dark and terrifying secrets — he's not just the man who keeps his nails short and collects coins. And now he's heading home...

`Fine stories to take with us into the night' - Neil Gaiman, Guardian
`An extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless and a career high point' - Matt Thorne, Sunday Telegraph

Big Driver: Not sure why i dived in on this 132 pager but i'm glad i did - it's a stormer! Never mind 'Don't go to the convention', what you really should avoid at all costs is any speaking engagement in New England! Tess Jean, author of the modestly popular Willow Grove Knitting Circle mysteries, is invited to address the Books & Brown Baggers club at the Chicopee library after their preferred guest author cancels. All goes well: four hundred house-trained guests rattle off usual deadly dull questions, Tess earns another few grand toward her retirement fund, and Brown Baggers president Rowenda Norville maps out a short-cut along the remote Stagg Road, will cut an hour off her journey. The 'short cut' is anything but on account of some klutz spilling several nail-studded woodcuts across the road. As Tess admires her puncture, a good Samaritan pulls up in his truck. The friendly giant makes a pretence of clearing the debris, his debris, gets bored, rapes Tess over and over, then stuffs what he thinks is her corpse in a sewage pipe while singing Brown Sugar (very badly). Bodies both rotting and already skeletal indicate that he's done this sort of thing before.

Tess endures a nightmare journey home, already trying to figure her next move. If she reports the matter to the police - and she knows she should, for the sake of the bastard's victims past and future - that will set the tabloids to salivating, but however unedifying a prospect, that isn't the main reason why she chooses to keep her own counsel. A new Tess was born of the appalling ordeal, one that takes matters into her own hands like some cross between Dirty Harry and Doreen Marquis (doyen of the Willow Grove Knitting Circle mysteries). A visit to The Stagger Inn (where local band the Zombie Bakers played their Wilson Pickett/ Cramps cover set the previous night) and much internet browsing leads her to trucker Al 'Big Driver' Strehlke and his interesting family connection ....

[paulfinch]

As always, I found this King collection incredibly readable - it's the size of the Bible, and I think I got through it in about 6 days.

But on reflection, when 4 stories out of 5 - or whatever it is - are about serial killers, I'm a bit concerned that his imagination may be running out of gas. I still regard SK as the modern master of masters, but tell the truth, I long for the days of NIGHTSHIFT and SKELETON CREW.

[erebus]

Four great tales these. In particular Big Driver and 1922. Sadly I got the Hardback so I haven't had the pleasure of reading the later added tale.