Ghost Story By Peter Straub

Ghost Story
By Peter Straub
Copyright 1979

It’s the age of disco -- or at least its waning days. America is held hostage and international tension is at an all-time high. None of this touches the small, upscale village of Millburn, New York which retains the charm of New England in the era of Carter. The Chowder Society – a group of five aging professionals – is the center of the small village’s social scene.



The Chowder Society – Attorney Sears James, Attorney Ricky Hawthorne, Doctor John Jaffre, writer Edward Wanderley, and wealthy playboy Lewis Benedickt – have a favorite activity in which they engage once every two weeks. They share ghost stories.

The story opens with a bit of a prologue of a young man in bed with a young woman in an upstairs hotel room. The man awakens to find himself in bed with a monster. When he tries to escape, he falls from a window to his death.

Flash forward a couple years. The Chowder Society is meeting sans one of their members. Mr. Wanderley has been dead almost a year. He died at a party held in the honor of a young actress being squired by Wandereley as he was ghost writing her biography. The Chowder Society is haunted by a nightmare they all share, but refuse to discuss. Instead, Sears James decides to invite Wanderley’s nephew – the brother of the man in the opening scene – who is an occult writer – to come to town and help the old men explain their dilemma.

Meanwhile, James and Hawthorne need to respond to the complaints of a regular complaining client who lives out on a farm. They arrive with the sheriff and find the man’s livestock all dead. What is strange is that all of the animals have their throats cut, but there is no blood present. The sheriff (an itinerant drunk) points out that the event is not uncommon. He’s learned through various law enforcement conferences that the same events have transpired all over the country in various locations at various times. The farmer promises to be extra vigilant in keeping an eye on his existing livestock to capture the predator.

Later that night, the Chowder Society convenes with bourbon, cigars, and James regales the group with a tale – supposedly true. He talks of his early days of teaching in a small New England town. The town was poor and the accommodations he lived in frugal beyond description. He teaches his charges of all age levels. One day, he notices a boy who is determined to argue whether or not the earth is flat or round. He will not hear reason. His name is Fenny Bate and the other kids shun him. When James asks the boy where he learned this misinformation, he says he heard it from Gregory, presumably his brother.

James takes to the woods to find the shack where the Bates live. He finally finds Fenny and his sister. Off in the distance projecting an air of malevolence, is Gregory. James tries to reason with the kids. But he sees the abject poverty in which they live and realizes the social circumstances of the town and finally gives up. He sees Gregory watching the kids and the school from afar and asks some of the other kids about Gregory. They say that Gregory used to do repairs on the school, but one day, Fenny and his sister pushed over a ladder he was on, killing Gregory.

James decides to keep Fenny and his sister after school to teach them. Gregory shows up and Fenny gets real scared and agitated. Fenny eventually dies there on the spot. He is put in an unmarked grave beside his brother and James is left haunted. He finished out the school year before returning to Milburne.

As scary and creepy as that story was, the members of the Chowder Society know a scarier and creepier story. It was a story they lived together 50 years earlier. James fears it may be the source of all their ills.

As the group grows more wary of the dreams haunting them, they each tell a tale of being haunted or terrified by a supernatural being. Lewis Benedikt’s wife was driven to suicide by something she saw in a hotel room. Wanderley died of an apparent heart attack and the young actress he was squiring disappeared from the face of the earth. Even Don Wanderley – Edward Wanderley’s nephew – has an encounter with a young woman and his brother dies after stealing her away.

After comparing notes, the group notices that their fem fatales all have the same initials: A.M. What worries Don Wanderley – summoned because of his knowledge of the supernatural – is that James and Hawthorne have a new secretary and her name is Alma Mobley.

Finally, after Benedikt dies mysteriously, the town bad boy disappears, and others come up missing or dead, Hawthorne and James decide it is time they told Don Wanderley the story of Eva Galli.

Galli was a young woman who moved to town in the 1920s and immediately charmed the young members of the Chowder Society just as they were starting their professional lives. The boys, sexually immature and naïve, keep the relationship purely platonic, just enjoying her company. She is engaged to a local man. When that man breaks it off, she invites the Society to her home. There, she becomes sexually aggressive with Benedikt who is appalled by her behavior. She bites and slaps him and when they try to restrain her, she falls and hits her head on a brick hearth. She is apparently dead.

The young men panic and decide to borrow a car to get help. Instead, they decide to place Galli’s body in the back seat and submerge it in a local quarry. As they car slips into the depths, Galli sits up and smiles at the boys through the back window. They are stricken with terror.

Now, the horrors of their past – Eva Galli/Anna Mobley and the Bate brothers – have come back to torment and kill them. Mobley reveals to them that the three are part of a race much older than humanity. They are the source of all of mankind’s tales of the supernatural. They are long-lived and they are evil.

As the holidays come and pass, Milburne is snowed in and isolated from the world. The jail is converted into a morgue for the victims of the supernatural terror. James, Hawthorne, Don Wanderley, and a young boy set out to hunt down and kill the creatures once and for all. Eventually, Don Wanderley is left to capture the creature in the form of a young girl and send her to her final reward.

This was a selection of my monthly book club and was recommended by yours truly. I had not read it before and knew it had a stellar reputation among fans of horror fiction. After having read it, I understand why. It generated the most intense and enjoyable discussion my book club has had in its eight year existence.

The characters in this book were wonderful. One can imagine these patrician souls, living their patrician lives, and enjoying their patrician luxuries. Sears James – whose very name screams patrician – is particularly well developed. He is the group skeptic, to patrician and set in the logic of his elder years to believe what is happening to him despite his experience with the Bate family.

The creatures – Mobley and the Bate brothers – were fascinating. Straub told Stephen King that he read all of the old American masters like Lovecraft, Poe, and Hawthorne before writing Ghost Story. In his creatures, he combines all the tropes of haunting into one creature and provides a rationale for their existence. Then he hints a Lovecraft’s Old Ones – an evil race older than mankind itself.

One of the important elements of horror fiction is isolation. Isolation can take many forms. It can be emotional, geographical, or racial. In Ghost Story, Straub employs the oft-used trope of the snowstorm to cut off the town from civilization. Then, he ramps it up just a bit more. As more and more people die in the town, the citizens isolate themselves from each other. There is no authority. The sheriff – a drunken halfwit – is a non-factor. The Chowder Society is very much on its own in confronting Mobley and her minions.

Straub throws the reader for a loop by starting his story at the end with the prologue. Several members of our group were thrown by Straub’s prologue. Some remarked that the first few chapters seemed to remotely detached from the prologue that the story was not making sense to them. Ghost Story does require some patience to read. It builds slowly then races forward. It all eventually makes sense and makes the whole reading experience of this novel worthwhile.

In our discussion of the creature, one member pointed out that perhaps the initials of the women the creature used were all A.M. He added that it might be Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end. Little nuances like this made the book such a fascinating club story.

There is a subtext in Ghost Story. Although is a resident of England, Straub is very much an American writer. Remember when this novel was written and published. The 1970s were winding down. It was a decade of social and political upheaval in the United States. There was a longing to return to “traditional values.” In a Rockwellian America, what is more wholesome and American than small town New England?

Straub deconstructs this myth. Behind the scenes of this portrait of small town America is a Peyton Place. There is drunkenness, corruption, and lots and lots of adultery. What better place for evil to show its face than a location putting up the façade of wholesomeness?

In his review of all things horror – Danse Macabre – Stephen King puts Ghost Story in the pantheon of great modern horror novels. He made this claim in 1981. Twenty-five years later, this statement holds true. Unlike much of the horror written in the 1970s, Ghost Story stands the test of time. It is timeless. The language is timeless. The evil is timeless. The characters are timeless. The setting is timeless. This story works in Colonial New England and it works in 2016 America.

Ghost Story is ranked number 15 in the Goodreads poll of great horror novels. That puts in some distinguished company like King’s master works The Shining and IT. It closely resembles another of King’s most heralded work, Salem’s Lot. I found it to be superior. King was in your face with his cynicism regarding small town America. Straub is much more subtle. Also missing from Salem’s Lot was a sense of isolation. Like any good horror novel, Ghost Story made the reader feel just a wee bit claustrophobic.

Magic Terror: Seven Tales By Peter Straub

Magic Terror: Seven Tales
By Peter Straub
Copyright 2001

Ashputtle
A morbidly obese kindergarten teacher tells her life’s tale in abstract terms. She lost her mother at a young age. Her father remarried her mother’s best friend. Her mother’s death leaves her empty, so she fills her life with food. Years later, while teaching, she talks about how parents are disarmed by an obese teacher who certainly must dedicate her entire life to her students since she couldn’t possibly have anything else in her life, being so unattractive. She shows one family with good looks, successful careers, and pretty children, that their perfect lives can be shattered and made imperfect.

This was a twisted tale with a twisted main character. The writing is so abstract that sometimes, the reader is forced to make assumptions. I didn’t much care for the “literary” style, but found the teacher and story to be revolting enough to make it worthwhile reading.

Isn’t It Romantic?
An American spy is on assignment in rural France. It is to be his last assignment, after which he will retire to his hobby of collecting and reading books. He is to stop a French arms merchant posing as an antiques dealer from consummating a sale with terrorists. He is chagrined to learn that the agency has an observer posted on the job, learning the ropes of the trade by observing him incognito. He monitors his quarry before making his move. But there is a double cross followed by a triple cross that leaves a bloodbath of bodies.

This was pretty standard spy fare – third rate John le Carré. There is no real twist or revelation. The story's subtext is a cliche. It is dull, boring, and lifeless – and overlong!

The Ghost Village
During the Vietnam War, a platoon of soldiers happens across an abandoned village. They enter one of the huts and find the body of a dead boy and a torture chamber. Before they depart the village, the narrator (a sergeant) sees the ghost of the little boy and the ghosts of two of his fellow soldiers who died hours before. Later, that sergeant encounters an old high school buddy in a local bar. That old buddy (a captain) tells the sergeant about the horror of what happened in that village and the nature of Vietnamese ghosts.

This was an intriguing tale. It seemed to go a number of different directions before coming together quite nicely at the end. It was quite atmospheric and tense. The story is a bit of a prequel to Straub’s Vietnam horror novel, KoKo.

Bunny is Good Bread
Young Fielding Bandolier lives in a small, ground level apartment with his abusive, ne’er do well father and his comatose mother – who was beaten into a coma by his father. Fee endures abuse and neglect as his father eeks out a living at area hotels that regularly fire him after just a few months. Fielding finds solace in movies. But the violence of the movies and the violence of his life have Fee looking for an outlet or escape. When his mother finally completes her death throes, he is fundamentally altered and the horror begins.

This was a dark story with no light moments or let up in the tension. At times, because Peter Straub tries entirely too hard to write “literature” as opposed to just writing a good story, the narrative is hard to follow. But the story is good enough and the sympathetic but dark main character strong enough to carry it.

Pork Pie Hat
In this story within a story, a Columbia English student becomes a fan of famous jazz musician who plays Greenwich Village clubs. After listening the saxophone player perform countless times, he decides to interview the man. “Hat” agrees to be interviewed. The student meets him at his dive hotel room and they discuss jazz, influences, and protégés. But Hat is interested in telling one other tale. He tells the student that he will never play on Halloween – won’t even leave his room on Halloween. Hat shares a harrowing tale of voodoo, hoodoo, and racism from the old South that chills the author to the bone.

This was a superb story within a story. The front end character development may have been overlong, but one can’t help but think Straub was padding just a little so this novelette could be published stand-alone in a cost effective manner. Straub effectively develops two atmospheres. The first being the jazz scene in an undefined era, perhaps the 1970s when swing jazz was a fad again. He also sets the atmosphere of “separate and unequal” living conditions in the South in the era of Jim Crow. He adds a mysterious element. While there was a white section and black section of town, Hat’s hometown had a third section where both whites and blacks of the lowest social and moral order lived. That is where the action takes place.

Hunger: An Introduction
A pompous bloviator takes us on a tour of his life and how it was he became a ghost rather than passing on to Heaven. He talks in great detail of his sins and transgressions, but not seeing them as sins or transgressions, but rather as conquests of which he is proud.

I know this was supposed to be a morality tale, but I enjoyed it more for the main character’s overt pomposity. He was an insufferable ass incredibly well written by Straub.

Mr. Club and Mr. Cuff
A wealthy financial advisor finds out he’s being cuckold by his greatest rival. He finds two hitmen from his old home town and church to help him get his revenge. He sends his wife to their summer home, knowing she’ll hook up with her lover. From there, he plans to have the two men work them over. Except these aren’t ordinary hit men. They are consummate professionals who look upon their work as art. They not only help the client exact revenge, they help him learn a few life lessons – the very hard way.

This was an amusing, yet dark and violent novella. Club and Cuff were totally over the top as characters and their high brow patois was amusing. The only problem I had was the causation factor in Club and Cuff teaching their client hard lessons and ruining his life, sending him back to his home town and bringing his life full circle. If the clues were there, I didn’t get them.

I’m not a major fan of Peter Straub. I look at Straub as someone a little embarrassed by what he does and therefore, has to try to make his horror writing high brow literature instead of just letting the prose flow naturally. Inside the literary flights of fancy in Ashputtle made it hard to mine that nugget of a good story. Mr. Club and Mr. Cuff also got bogged down in deep dictionary words that took away from the story. Straub ought to take a lesson from Stephen King and just try telling the tale.

Having said that, Straub’s style served him well in Hunger: An introduction. That character was supposed to be a pompous ass and it would seem that if Straub could develop any character exceptionally well, it would be the pompous ass.

Ashputtle and Porkpie Hat are held in high regard by most reviewers. Most seem to hate, Hunger: An Introduction. I didn’t despise any of the stories in this collection, although I found, Isn’t it Romantic to be pedestrian and dull reading with nothing new or exciting to add to an old concept. Magic Terror isn’t going to rival any of the short story collections of the masters of short fiction. But the seven tales contained within (if you can suffer Isn’t it Romantic) are worth the time to read.

Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Black House
By Stephen King and Peter Straub
Copyright 2001


Black House takes place in 2001. Jack Sawyer, hero of the novel, The Talisman is just 31 years old, but retired from the LAPD where he was once one of its most successful detectives. His last case found him visiting French Landing, Wisconsin where he ties one of the local residents to a pair of grisly murders in the Hollywood area. Sawyer becomes a hero to most of French Landing and he decides to settle there in his retirement, living off of the wealth he inherited from his parents – his mother, Lilly, having died five years prior.

French Landing is bedeviled (much as Derry was in IT) by a serial killer who snatches kids and eats parts of their body. He is dubbed by the local newspaper “The Fisherman” – named after the notorious serial killer of children in New York of the 1930s, Albert Fish.

French Landing’s constabulary would very much like Sawyer’s help in nabbing the killer. He is reluctant, but finds himself drawn in when he meets the mother of the latest victim. He understands that this killer is of two worlds, just as he is, and that the fate of both worlds might lie in him finding The Fisherman and saving the young boy.

One chief complaint about The Talisman was how slow it started. Black House takes even longer getting started. The first fifty pages are the reader, traveling with a crow around French Landing, observing short scenes from the lives of the novel’s principle characters. This is never the best way to introduce characters and is the book’s greatest weakness.

As I said in my review of 'Salem's Lot, one of King’s greatest strengths is in the development of his settings. Be it Jerusalem’s Lot, Castle Rock, Derry, or the other fictional cities in which he has set his stories, the town itself becomes a character. Not French Landing. The first pages basically give us a road map and brief character sketches; nothing more. While the book has plenty going for it, including many hints as to what is coming in the Dark Tower saga, it never really recovers from this weak opening.

Nor are the characters nearly as sympathetic. Instead of the cleverly developed Wolf from The Talisman, Jack’s dearest friend is blind disc jockey and radio host, Henry Lyden. Lyden is not badly developed and the character serves as a worthwhile partner for Jack. But Lyden lacks a sympathetic personality. Wolf was one of King’s (or Straub’s) finest characters. Lyden pales in comparison.

The other poorly developed characters are the biker gang who become central to the story in helping Jack advance on the Black House to save young Tyler and the universe. The bikers are all professional brewmasters at the local brewery. They are also all college graduates who are given to discussing poetry and literature from time to time. One is a failed surgeon. That all works. However, This apparent conflict in personalities, while referenced and developed to a point, never seems to affect the character. They remain bullies and brutes, despite their education and profession. The juxtaposition of the diametrically opposed personality traits could have led to much deeper, richer, characters with internal conflict – again, something we get from King, even in his worst stories. Instead, we get two dimensional characters – smart guys who like to ride around on bikes and bully people.

The chief antagonist (other than The Fisherman himself) is a smarmy newspaper reporter named Wendell Green. The problem with this character is he’s just a little two smarmy. He’s a caricature of the reporter whose motivation is driven not by a love of the truth and a love of telling a story. His motivation is money. I suppose there might be a few who are truly like that. However, as I know from experience, one does not go into journalism to make money. Wendell Green is not complex. He is dull.

The story, once it get moving from its slow start, is engaging. Jack learns from his old friend Parker, now dead in our world, a gunslinger out of the mold of Roland Duschaine in another world, and our old friend Parkus in The Territories, tells Jack that Tyler Marshall is not the typical victim of The Fisherman. Tyler is special. Tyler is a “breaker” whose special powers will be used to destroy the beams upon which the Dark Tower rests as the crux of all existence.

Jack spend little time in The Territories except to meet Tyler’s mother, very happily married in our world, but a widowed queen of The Territories – having succeeded his own mother. He is compelled to help because of his strong attraction and love for this queen. He and his biker buddies discover that the Fisherman’s hideout is the most unlikely place in the entire city and his lair is a house, painted entirely black, hidden in the woods.

As they approach the house, Jack and his buddies know they’ve left our world and entered one dominated by an evil being known as The Crimson King who is imprisoned in the Dark Tower and would see it and the beams that support it destroyed so that he might be set free to unleash his will on all of the worlds of the universe.

While the story generally well paced, it suffers from the same difficulties as The Talisman. It could have been better edited. Although the two writers combine their work seamlessly so the reader has no idea who wrote what, there are simply too many words for several scenes. The scene where the bikers approach the Black House goes on for about 1,200 words too long. The final journey into the pits below the Black House becomes an epic quest in and of itself. Some critics noted that Jack’s journey into the Algincourt Hotel in The Talisman was way too short. They went the extreme in making this encounter too long. As a narrative, it resembles Mark Petrie’s desperate struggle to escape his bindings while the vampire Barlow awaits in the cellar. But King and Straub fail to develop that level of tension.

The ending is an unusual one for a King book. King doesn’t always write happy endings. Check out the endings of Firestarter, Cujo, or The Dead Zone. However, this ending, while I would not characterize it as dark, takes us a direction we did not expect. King and Straub should be applauded for their original twist at the end which was much different than The Talisman which a friend of mine compared to the ending of the first Star Wars trilogy with Ewoks dancing in celebration.

As a baseball fan, I did enjoy all of the reference to ballplayers from a decade ago. Many have names that will always be remembered like Mark McGwire. But other references to players such as Jeremy Burnitz and Richie Sexson are bound to fade with time. Most of the players referenced are members of a sad group of players known as the Milwaukee Brewers of the 2000 baseball season. One of the charms of Kings works is they reference the pulp culture of the time in which they were written, which is why I hate to see them "updated" when they are rewritten for the television or big screen.

Having read outside the chronology of King’s published order of books, I’ve jumped ahead in the development of the Dark Tower saga. The Crimson King was actually introduced in an earlier novel, Insomnia. He receives a great deal of development here to the point that it makes reading Black House integral to truly understanding The Dark Tower.

Besides The Territories, we visit Midworld which is Roland’s home world and where he spends most of his existence. Prior to Black House, Roland has already learned of the beams and the Dark Tower at the center. By the time Dark Tower was published, King’s time of slipping coy, obscure hints at the nature of Roland’s quest had passed and Black House becomes part of its narrative more than a simple sequel to The Talisman.

As a stand alone book, I would rank it as average in the library of King’s work. It’s not quite as strong as The Talisman, but much stronger than his worst stuff. For fans of The Dark Tower, it is essential reading. Because it is a sequel, it make The Talisman an essential element of the Dark Tower saga as well.

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

The Talisman
By Stephen King and Peter Straub
Copyright 1984

It is in The Talisman the Stephen King (and Peter Straub) introduce the concept of “other worlds” existing parallel to our own – the very crux of the premise for the Dark Tower. In the chronology of King’s publishing, this is our first real step into other planes of existence.

The book tells the story of 12 year old Jack Sawyer who must undertake a cross country journey to save his mother, an aging B-movie actress dying of cancer. Jack is bereft of moral support and assistance. His father is dead from a “hunting accident” at the hands of Jack’s uncle, Morgan Sloat. Jack and his mother are residing in a New Hampshire resort hotel in the offseason where Jack knows no one.

It is an old black amusement park caretaker (amazing how it is always worldly black people who dispense wisdom in King novels) who reveals to Jack the importance of saving his mother from the ravages of cancer. Speedy Parker, wandering minstrel and tinkerer of carousels, tells Jack that, in another existence, his mother is a queen whose life also hangs in the balance. Also in the balance are the fates of the residents of “The Territories” who will certainly suffer when their queen dies and the notorious “Morgan of Orris” (Jacky’s Uncle Morgan’s Twinner) assumes dictatorial power – power he will wield without mercy. The Queen’s son – Jack’s “twinner” or counterpart in the Territories died at a young age – and therefore there is no heir.

Jack uses Speedy’s “magic juice” which is a bottle of cheap grape wine to transport himself to the territories – a world similar to European Middle Ages in its culture and governance – to see the queen on her deathbed. He learns that somewhere on the west coast is secreted the Talisman – an otherworldly orb that has the power to rid his mother of her disease. More to save his mother than to save the Territories, Jack sets out on his journey.

Most of his travels out of New England and across the Midwest are undertaken in our world and he encounters many of the problems a 12 year old boy might encounter when traveling alone. Perverts who want sex. Lowlife businessmen who exploit him for slave labor, and eventually ends up as an inmate in a children’s home run by an demented Christian minister.

He also finds assistance in unlikely characters. In the Territories, the gruff chief of the queen’s guard provides assistance in setting him on his course. A werewolf who more closely resembles John Lennon and Larry Talbot joins Jack in his transcontinental adventure. His cousin, Richard, who is Morgan Sloat’s (Morgan of Orris) son joins Jack for the final leg of the adventure in the Territories in the area known as the Blasted Lands.

Jack arrives safely on the west coast and finds that the Talisman is held within a foreboding black hotel known as the Agincourt. Jack must enter this cursed building, emerge with the pink orb that is the Talisman, and return to his mother to save her – and her Territories counterpart – from the ailments that are certain to doom them both.

Peter Straub, who’s written many horror novels – most notably, Ghost Story and King decided to collaborate on the book while both were living in England in 1977. The collaboration did not start until four years later when both were back home in the states. Reading Straub (and I’ve only read two of his novels), he seems an unlikely partner for King. Straub’s text is dryer and his narrative more straightforward than King’s blue collar prose. I can’t help but believe this might have been a better book had King written it alone.

This is not a horror novel. Chronologically, it came on the heels of the horrific Pet Sematary. Just a few years prior, King took his first steps away from traditional horror writing in his novella compilation Different Seasons which are haunting and tragic, but not horror. After writing about a haunted car in Christine and the notorious Maine cemetery that brings the dead to life, King decided to delve into fantasy.

There are several things about this book that make it an enjoyable read. First and foremost is the character Wolf who is a friendly, jovial werewolf – except during that time of the month. But he is not the devious, ravenous, cunning creature brought to life in the Universal Pictures movies. His job in the Territories is to “protect the herd” which means sheep tending. Wolves are schooled in how to protect the heard when the full moon brings out their primal urges. To hurt the herd is to doom the wolf to damnation. When Wolf inadvertently joins Jack in our world, Jack becomes the herd and Wolf sees to his care and protection – even as he turns in the cycle of the moon.

Wolf is simple minded. He reminds the reader somewhat of Tom Cullen in The Stand, but his simplicity comes not from any physiological defect in the brain. Rather, he is simple because his purpose is singular – to protect the herd. He knows nothing more. But he is perceptive, intuitive, and singularly lovable. Wolf is one of King’s (or Straub’s) most memorable characters.

King and Straub also develop well the nature of the Territories – both its good and bad points. It is a simpler place than our world. Neither technology nor pollution befoul its air. It’s people are simple agrarian drones who live by the values put forth in their spiritual tome “The Book of Good Farming”.

The authors develop the theology of the Territories to show its similarities to our own Christianity. Their Bible, is called The Book of Good Farming. Their favorite saying in accepting something fated is "God pounds his nails" which is perhaps a reference to our own Savior's vocation as a carpenter. Their Jesus is referred to as Jason.

The Territories is not without its evil, however. There is the notorious Morgan of Orris – raper of women, power hungry usurper of good, and outright murderer. It’s Morgan’s single purpose to thwart Jack’s saving of the Queen in the Territories and his mother in our world. Both Morgan of Orris and Morgan Sloat of Hollywood, CA pursue Jack in his cross country odyssey. There’s also the Blasted Lands which geographically correspond to the area between Illinois and California. This land which one can infer was subjected to some sort of nuclear incident, is home to evil mutant beings who kill without remorse.

The book’s chief shortcoming is its slow pace. It takes 100 pages for the story to get started. Interludes are too weighty in text. The story frequently stalls and the reader is impatient for things to get moving again. We are not talking of character development interludes or subplot interludes. These are interludes that bear directly upon the story, but are too long in their telling.

This is not a typical fault in King’s writing. If King’s weighty tomes have a fault (and he has written some large books that will challenge your average Sauder book case to hold) it is the many words he dedicates to characters’ back story. Fans of King actually don’t find this as much of a fault as do critics. One must wonder if these overlong interludes are the writing of Peter Straub or the product of poor editing. Either way, the book could have been a tauter story with better editing.

In the body of King’s work, it would rank as second tier novel. It is not in the same league as truly great works like The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, or IT. But it is certainly far better than many of his attempts to be an “important” writer with such substandard volumes as Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder, Insomnia, or the horrific and nearly unreadable Lisey’s Story.

Like the earlier novels reviewed here, this book was written before King had developed the scope of his Dark Tower series. The links to that saga are few, but important. The Talsiman, we find out later, is one of 13 orbs – each with a different nature. We find out that healing is but a byproduct of its true purpose and that same Talisman will serve as the object that brings the important turning point in the life of a young Roland Duschaine in the fourth volume of the series, Wizards and Glass. We also know that the Territories are one of the other worlds on the many spokes extending from the Dark Tower. Roland visits the Territories in his journeys. The place he visits and its nature are revealed in the 2001 sequel King and Straub penned entitled Black House.

Serendipity had me reading this book when it was selected by my book/cigar/scotch club’s book of the month. Their critique was helpful to me in writing this one. Their feelings about the book were similar to mine, although some who are not fans of King felt the novel’s weaknesses a larger liability than I. Unfortunately, I am the only member of the club that has taken in the entire Dark Tower series and all its tangents. I tried to convey to them that this was but a small part of a much grander epic story. They weren’t impressed.

The Talisman is an enjoyable page turner to pass the time. If you’re not a King reader and want to find out why so many people love his work so much, this is NOT the novel you should read. For King fans, or fans of the horror or fantasy genres, It is worth the hours needed to follow Jack across the country and back.