Bookends: The King of Horror

Here is the latest Book End column from this week’s issue of the Spectator:

Much of Stephen King’s recent work has been relatively lighthearted, but in Full Dark, No Stars he returns with gusto to his dark side and explores the perils of getting what you ask for. The first and longest of these four novellas, ‘1922’, is a murderer’s confession: a farmer describes murdering his wife in Nebraska just after the first world war and the unexpected consequences that gradually destroy his life. It’s stark and compelling, and should be avoided at all costs by readers with a phobia of rats. In ‘Big Driver’, an author of cosy crime novels is raped and left for dead. She sets out to look for revenge, finds rather more than she expected, and develops an unusual relationship with her SatNav. ‘Fair Extension’ is a variant on the Faust theme. A bank official is dying of cancer.