It is Valentine’s Day, my darlings, and what better way to celebrate than with a nice horror novel? That’s right, life sucks and then you die, and some people die in horrible, awful ways. How nice that Stephen King is always here to tell us in graphic detail the myriad of ways in which those poor unfortunate souls are oofed. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Synopsis

When the bloody mutilated body of a young boy is found, it becomes immediately clear who committed the ghastly deed. Multiple people sighted the beloved town little league coach and devoted daddy to two little girls just prior to (with the boy) and just following the murder (with the boy’s blood). Add that to the buckets of forensic evidence also tying him to the murder, it appears to be an open and shut case. After a very public arrest, however, numerous pieces of evidence bubble to the surface seeming to prove the suspect was hours away and in the company of others who can also vouch for his presence. Just how on Earth can a man be two places at once? And what kind of fresh hell will Flint City, Oklahoma, detectives uncover as they try to get to the bottom of this heinous crime?

Review

Obviously, there’s a trigger warning for some seriously disturbing child murder. Then again, if you pick up a Stephen King book you should be prepared for his particular brand of shocking no-holds-barred horror. If not, that rock you’ve been living under is probably getting pretty heavy. Admittedly, I love Stephen King but he also has the capacity to annoy the hell out of me. Let me put it this way. You know how we all have that one relative who can’t really tell a story from beginning to end without going on all manner of tangents? It starts off by them telling you about that one time her Aunt Nancy got pooped on by a bird and it was all in her hair. Nancy has great hair. She took her to get ice cream once and some guy tripped and his cone fell IN NANCY’S HAIR. Oh yeah, there was a car accident that day outside the parlor involving the janitor at the elementary school who had all those corgis. Remember the corgis? Once she saw a poodle at the Quicktrip and it pooped next to the cheetos. She’s never really liked cheetos. Too messy. **deep inhale** At least we circled back to poop, am I right? That’s kind of what it’s like reading a Stephen King novel. His characters tend to wax nostalgic about all manner of things about which you couldn’t give two tablespoons of bird poop and you have to sit there and listen to it to get to the good part. If you are currently annoyed reading this insanely long paragraph, you now have a crash course in reading a King novel. A novel that could have been 350 pages lands on a whopping 650 and you’ve wasted two extra hours of your life reading about bird poop.

The rest, however, is great and exciting. In this book, we see the return of one of King’s most iconic characters, Holly Gibney. It just takes him somewhere around 300 pages to get to her. After the passing of her partner, Bill Hodges, she joins Detective Ralph Anderson for this story. Ralph, always the rational and pragmatic lawman, is annoyingly stubborn in his skepticism. Just how many clues do you need to admit something strange is afoot? If something is clearly impossible, the answer becomes… the impossible! There, that was easy. Now maybe more people don’t have to die before you pull your head out of the dark cavernous void of your ass. No?

For how long it takes King to get to the action, when the action does arrive it’s abrupt. Don’t blink or you’ll miss the death of a major character. In King’s world, there are no red shirts. No one is safe and everyone is expendable. Frankly, that’s a good thing because predictability is a bore. That being said, this book is fairly predictable in many aspects. We spend most of our time waiting for Ralph to wake up and smell the paranormal. Some of the gaps of how we have to fill in, but we’re pretty sure about the nature of the what.

Overall, this book was entertaining. It’s peppered with interesting and quirky characters. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s another satisfying addition to the ever-expanding King canon.

Published May 22, 2018 by Scribner. ISBN 9781501180989. Hardcover. 561 pages.