Bag of Bones - Stephen King

Reviewer’s Foreword ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There is nothing quite as good as a decent, old-fashioned horror story to those that like me enjoy this genre. So before you think ‘Oh no, not another Stephen King book review’ allow me a chance to say why this is one of his better novels. I don’t think there is any need to go into the author’s background except to say that there is a class distinction in America much like our own British one. We call it “working class” the Americans call it either “White trash” or “trailer trash”. Before I get some remarks about “racialism” I’m simply trying to point out that these euphemism’s are still in ...

Bag of Bones is partly inspired by Daphne du Maurier's classic Rebecca, but there's more than homage in this novel of horror and romance. Like du Maurier's Manderley, King's scary old place (on the shore of Maine's remote Dark Score Lake) is haunted by the late lady of the manor. There are many gory ghosts afoot, though: men, women, and wailing kids. The hero, a thriller novelist, stirs up hell's plenty of angry shades while investigating his wife's death. It turns out she either had a dark secret herself or was onto some dread scandal lurking in Dark Score Lake. As in King's previous book, Wizard and Glass, the fabric ...

Having left this novel to be a 'dustcatcher' on my bookshelves for months, a heavy cold prompted me to pick it up and give it a go. Two days later and it's finished - which I think is as good an indication as any of what a page turner it is. The plot is like many of his more recent books, concerned with romance and small town history as much as it is with horror. Set initially in one of his favourite(?) fictional spots, Derry (also home to IT and more recently Insomnia), we are introduced to bestselling (though only up to number 15) author Mike Noonan and his beautiful wife Johanna, who dies tragically within the first few pages. ...