I guess it was bound to happen. I read a Stephen King. I have to admit that much of the reason lay behind his decision to leave Viking for Scribner's, Viking having decided that $17,000,000 for Bag of Bones was a little too hefty. After reading the novel, I suspect the decision was as much his agent's as his own.The book is an uncomfortable mix of supernatural and psychological terror. One of the reasons I've delayed reading King is that I have difficulty turning a car into a killer, but then I have no imagination. Still, there is some good writing and I have to admit it's a real page-turner.
Mike Noonan is a successful writer of breezy mystery/thriller titles who has accumulated a comfortable bank account. His wife is killed by a stroke (or was it?) and this event creates a fearful writer's block. Just turning on his computer makes him physically ill. He is also tormented by dreams that seem to be calling him back to Sara Laughs, the name of their lake house, near the town of TR and on Dead Score Lake - both aptly named. Sara was the name of an African-American singer who had built the house many years before, was murdered, and whose malevolent presence haunts the house, although he doesn't know it yet.
He hears all sorts of strange noises and the refrigerator magnets don't you love that touch - begin spelling out strange messages.
Mike strikes up a friendship with Mattie, a lovely young widow and her three-year-old whose name bears an uncanny resemblance to that of his unborn child. He has learned that his wife was pregnant when she died, and he also learns that she had made numerous trips to Sara Laughs, meeting with a strange man and has been asking questions around town that had begun to seriously irritate the locals.
Mike's relationship also does more than irritate the locals; they leave veiled threats telling Mike to stop having anything to do with Mattie.
It turns out that Max Devore, a very wealthy man, and Mattie's father-in-law, wants custody of her child. Mike gets himself in deeper trouble when he hires a New York lawyer to help her in the custody battle. The threats escalate into killing and during a ferocious storm Mike discovers the secrets that his wife had ferreted out.
Personally, I would have preferred more of the psychological and less of the supernatural silliness, but I can see why King has been called the Dickens of the twentieth century.
