About the Author

Stephen King is the bestselling author of more than thirty books of which the most recent are HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, DREAMCATCHER and EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine

Reviews

'A beautiful excursion into new narrative territory showing an accomplished storyteller making unusual choices and resisting the obvious at every turn...a portal into King's incredible imagination' Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday on FROM A BUICK 8'Excellent on police lore and procedure...enriched by a double plot that shows men ageing, changing and disappearing over two decades...Impressive in its handling of narrative voice and structure as well as character' The Sunday Times on FROM A BUICK 8'A voice as distinctive as it is compelling' Scotsman on FROM A BUICK 8'Stephen King is blessed with an apparently inexhaustible imagination and a talent for storytelling that shows little sign of waning. In his hands at least, the art is far from being lost' Daily Mail on EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL'Still on top of his game...An unusual and disturbing mix that no other modern writer could pull off' The Times on EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL'Astonishingly good' - Independent on HEARTS IN ATLANTIS'Accomplished...unputdownable...his mesmerising best' - Observer on BAG OF BONES'King has inspired a whole generation to read. He's made them read good, witty prose...a fabulous teller of stories who can create an entire new world and make the reader live in it' - Express on DREAMCATCHER

King, we learn in an author's note, hashed out the plot of this gripper while driving from western Pennsylvania to New York. The first draft took two months to write. That's quick work, and it's reflected in the book's simplicity of plot and theme; unlike King's chewy last novel, Dreamcatcher, this one goes down like a shot of moonshine, hot and clean, much like Cujo, say, or Gerald's Game. In 1979, an odd man drives what at first glance looks like a 1954 mint-quality Buick Roadmaster up to a service station in rural Pennsylvania, then vanishes, leaving behind the car. The state police of Troop D deposit the vehicle in a shed near their barracks, where, up to the present, it remains a secret from all but cop colleagues for the car isn't exactly a car; it may be alive, and it certainly serves as a doorway between our world and... what? Another dimension? Another galaxy? The troopers never find out, despite their amateurish scientific investigations of it and of the weird beings that occasionally emerge from the vehicle's trunk: freaky fish, creepy flowers and more. Moreover, the "car" is dangerous: the day it appears, a state trooper disappears, and experiments over the years with cockroaches, etc., indicate that just as the car can spew things out, it will ingest them. While the book's relative brevity and simplicity does lend comparison to earlier King, and King has relied on a nasty car before (Christine), the author's stylistic maturity manifests in his sophisticated handling of the round robin of narrators (both first and third-person), the sharp portrayal of police ways and mores and the novel's compelling subthemes (loyalty, generational bondings) and primary theme: that life is filled with Buick 8s, phenomena that blindside us and that we can never understand. This novel isn't major King, but it's nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment. (On sale Sept. 24) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.