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Fatally Bound - A chilling crime thriller (Mac McRyan Mystery Series Book) Roger Stelljes Fatally bound... by one decision with deadly consequences. Fatally bound... by one killer with deadly intentions. A USA Today Bestselling mystery! The Gail Force Robert Lane "A powerful rush of suspense. Jake Travis is one of the best leading men to take the thriller fiction stage in recent years." Florida Weekly Deadly Stillwater: A compelling crime thriller (Mac McRyan Mystery Series Book) Roger Stelljes Two girls snatched off the streets in broad daylight - a gripping and thrilling mystery that stops you in your tracks! NY Times Bestselling Series. Ad feedback Special Offers and Product Promotions Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008 : It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen King's latest novel in just a few words. Suffice it to say that Duma Key, the story of Edgar Freemantle and his recovery from the terrible nightmare-inducing accident that stole his arm and ended his marriage, is Stephen King's most brilliant novel to date (outside of the Dark Tower novels, in which case each is arguably his best work).

Duma Key is as rich and rewarding as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (yes, that Shawshank Redemption ), and as truly scary as anything King has written ( and that's saying a lot ). Readers who have "always wanted to try Stephen King" but never known where to start should try a few pages of Duma Key--the frankness with which Edgar reveals his desperate, sputtering rages and thoughts of suicide is King at the top of his game. And that's just the first thirty pages... --Daphne Durham Duma Key: Where It All Began A Note from Chuck Verrill, the Longtime Editor of Stephen King In the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. "I'm thinking of calling it Duma Key," he offered. I liked the sound of that--the title was like a drumbeat of dread. "You know how Lisey's Story is a story about marriage?" he said. "Sure," I answered. The novel hadn't yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon--what a marriage that was.

Then he dropped the other shoe: "I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce." Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled "Memory"--a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published "Memory," Stephen had completed a draft of Duma Key, and it became clear to me how "Memory" and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying. If you read the following two texts side by side--"Memory" as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form--you'll see a writer at work, and how stories can both contract and expand. Whether Duma Key is an expansion of "Memory" or "Memory" a contraction of Duma Key, I can't really say. Can you? --Chuck Verrill "Memory" Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says.

I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten. Maybe, but that doesn’t matter, either. That's what Kamen says. My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in building and construction. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I was a genuine American-boy success in that life, worked my way up like a motherf---er, and for me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to force things. But I played my hunches, and most of them played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth about forty million dollars. And what we had together still worked. I looked at other women from time to time but never strayed. At the end of our particular Golden Age, one of our girls was at Brown and the other was teaching in a foreign exchange program. Just before things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her. I had an accident at a job site. That's what happened. I was in my pickup truck.

The right side of my skull was crushed. My ribs were broken. My right hip was shattered. And although I retained sixty percent of the sight in my right eye (more, on a good day), I lost almost all of my right arm. I was supposed to lose my life, but I didn’t. Then I was supposed to become one of the Vegetable Simpsons, a Coma Homer, but that didn't happen, either. I was one confused American when I came around, but the worst of that passed. By the time it did, my wife had passed, too. She's remarried to a fellow who owns bowling alleys. My older daughter likes him. My younger daughter thinks he’s a yank-off. My wife says she’ll come around. Maybe sí, maybe no. That's what Kamen says. When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn’t know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain. I can't remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but it's all pretty academic. Like a picture of a mountain in National Geographic magazine. It wasn’t academic at the time.

At the time it was more like climbing a mountain. Review: Duma Key by Stephen King | Books | The Guardian by Stephen King 592pp, Hodder, £18.99 Joining a long list of troubled Stephen King protagonists with paranormal powers, Edgar Freemantle is the limping, crutch-dependent, one-armed, memory-addled survivor of a near- fatal crash. He was a contented construction company CEO who still worked on site until one day his truck was crumpled by a reversing crane with a broken beeper. Told in flashback, the incident kick-starts the book like an over-zealous Health & Safety manifesto, but also serves effectively to make you rather like Edgar. Liking people is a big deal in this book. You are absolutely not allowed to blame anyone - not his wife for leaving him, or the biting ghosts he encounters on the island of the novel's title, because it's just not their fault.

Duma Key could have been called Shit Happens Once he's arrived on the island (one of the Florida keys) hoping relocation will assist his recovery, it's not long before Edgar encounters Wireman, carer for Elizabeth Eastlake, the sole survivor of a wealthy family who inhabited the island in the early years of the 20th century. As a child Elizabeth fell from a carriage, the head injury and subsequent memory loss leaving her vulnerable to an entity referred to throughout the book as Perse. This Queen of the Dead first contacted Elizabeth through her doll, Noveen, encouraging her to draw pretty pictures, but soon Noveen's voice changed and the spirit showed Elizabeth that what she drew could be made to manifest itself. Cue a hurricane, a vicious frog-boy and all manner of other weirdness. Coincidences soon emerge. Edgar too has a head injury; he too has memory synapses misfiring all over the place; and he too soon falls into the grasp of the rapacious Perse when he discovers an extraordinary talent for visual art.

Wireman meanwhile becomes a mixture of wisecracking sidekick and guardian angel with a truism for every occasion; he too has a dark and painful past he will eventually share with Edgar and young Jack Cantori, engaged by the rental company as Edgar's literal right-hand man and the final member of the trio who take part in the novel's concluding boy's own adventure - an expedition designed to solve the mystery of Duma Key. They even have lashings of ginger beer. It takes an interminable time for Edgar to realise that he is not having psychic experiences but is being manipulated by a malevolent force from beyond the grave. Still, we go through the motions of his nightmares and visions - including an overly familiar one of identical twin girls who try to lure an innocent to an early grave - and watch as Edgar rather effortlessly becomes a most fraudulent darling of the art scene, a world that gives King an opportunity for a pleasantly bilious side-swipe. Edgar paints, sleeps, gets angry, goes for walks, eats and, come night-time, cuddles an anger-doll for comfort. It's hard not to feel impatient as the clues and nightmares proliferate; but then finally, with very little warning, it gets creepy.

And I mean real bloody-hell-I-wish-I'd-gone-for-a-pee creepy. The reward for getting through the minutiae of Edgar's recovery is a real understanding of what it takes to induce terror. In these scenes towards the end, King not only thickened the shadows and made things move in my peripheral vision, he kept me awake for hours afterwards while every image he'd drawn came at me out of the dark. I didn't go to sleep till it was light outside. Worryingly, though, he crowbars at least one "If only I'd known that ... " into what feels like each chapter. In a debut novel from a nervous writer desperate to be liked this might have been understandable, but it is odd from an author with his experience. Though the first one raised a chill on my skin, by the end it was the literary equivalent of being poked for attention by a four-year-old. Nevertheless, Duma Key has some moments that will take a long time to go away. It does the job of a powerful horror novel, which is to crawl into quiet spaces in your brain and frighten you when you least expect it. When King is good, he really is very, very good.

Adele Hartley is director of the Dead by Dawn film festival. Duma Key - Stephen King - Book Review - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Darkness in the Land of Steady Sunshine Search Books | Books of The Times Darkness in the Land of Steady Sunshine Continue reading the main story Stephen King ’s “Duma Key” ventures to an all-but-uninhabited Florida island where the shells groan at high tide, tennis balls appear unexpectedly, foliage grows ominously quickly, and at least one heron flies upside-down. Given this combination of author and setting, it’s inevitable that something terribly undead will show up before the book is over. But Mr. King’s use of horror is not what it used to be. It may still be the impetus for his stories, but it is no longer the foremost reason they’re interesting. Sure, he can still use supernatural effects to scare the wits out of you. But lately he also shows off other interests. In the wake of the 1999 roadside accident that permanently altered his consciousness, he has turned the evanescence of health and sanity into his books’ most disturbing source of fear.

“Duma Key” is about characters whose near-death experiences have given them psychic powers. That may make it sound fanciful, but this novel is frank and well grounded. Mr. King’s main character, Edgar Freemantle, is a regular Joe with only a few unusual qualities. One: He has struck it rich in the construction business. Another: He has lost an arm in an accident. And also this: Unlike may other people whose lives suddenly go off course, he knows exactly what hit him. It was a construction crane, and it smashed him to jelly. As the book begins, Edgar is in the process of moving from Minnesota to Florida. His doctor has ordered a change of scenery. So he arrives on Duma and moves into a big pink house with what is quite literally a drop-dead view of the sunset. “Salmon Point, No. 13,” says the young assistant who drives him to his new home, in a nice display of the author’s mischief. “I hope you’re not superstitious.” Photo Stephen King Credit Amy Guip Mr. King takes his teasingly sweet time in revealing exactly what’s going on here. But it turns out that the sunsets make Edgar want to draw. And he’s good at it.

And the details that crop up in his pictures have a way of prefiguring real events or even causing them, especially when those events are deadly. Elizabeth Eastlake, the ancient grande dame in the nearby house, has weirdly powerful artistic talents of her own. Continue reading the main story Like Elizabeth, and like Wireman, the affectionate ex-lawyer who takes care of her, Edgar lives in a befogged and unsteady mental state. Each of them has suffered some kind of head injury; each of them endures what Mr. King calls “weird slip-slides,” moments of maddening confusion. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In such an atmosphere the rules of fantasy might run wild, but Mr. King constructs this story with patience and rigor. His own past tendency to wander untethered into the world of dreams is under control. So is his editors’ tendency to let that happen. The winding narrative of “Duma Key” is interspersed with short chapters on the subject of “How to Draw a Picture.” There are 12 of these, and they incorporate creeping, gradual revelations about Elizabeth’s fraught family history.

(“You’re not going to tell me he raised six girls out here,” Edgar says to Wireman, upon hearing the tale of Elizabeth’s father. “That’s just too gothic.”) These chapters also offer direct advice about how the artist should treat memory, but they need not be high-minded. Mr. King more readily illustrates this, to the point where he doesn’t need to explain it. However simple his storytelling sounds, it exerts a relentless tidal pull. The expert scattering of secrets throughout this narrative helps to keep it moving. At first Mr. King takes an unhurried approach to introducing Edgar’s history (with two adult daughters, as well as an ex-wife who’d “taken off the Freemantle uniform and quit the team”) and Edgar’s amazement at the spookier aspects of Florida. But he picks up the pace when “Duma Key” reaches its puzzle stage. Photo The last third of the book goes into overdrive, leading each of the people and objects strewn innocently through the story to some kind of diabolical turn. The graphic artist Mark Stutzman has delivered yet another great-looking cover that mimics Mr. King’s hidden-in-plain-sight tricks.

Although this last part ought to be the book’s most furious, the less action-packed aspects of the story manage to be just as compelling. Mr. King generates suspense just following the way Edgar struggles with his memory. Likewise there is drama in the way he experiences phantom sensations of a lost arm, deals with his loved ones or tries to figure out what kind of Twilight Zone he’s wandered into. Then there are Edgar’s drawings, which evolve from innocent landscapes to the stuff of a full-fledged art career. Mr. King seems to have particular fun with the process by which Edgar finds himself becoming the toast of Sarasota and a lauded “American primitive” to boot. “Frogs the size of Cocker Spaniel puppies” are among the beastly things unleashed by Mr. King once the art appreciation stops — and the final melee begins. But his book has raised its ante in careful stages. So foreshadowing (“or so it seemed to me then”) gives way slowly to dark nuance. (“There’s something here, and it’s acting on me. Is it possible it even called me?”) Then comes terrible certainty.

(“I felt it and knew: the three of us were here because something wanted us here.”) And then the menace is at the door. (“Horror waiting to happen. Inbound on rotted sails.”) And then it’s inside. And then there’s no reaching forward — for fear that “something cold and wet and draped in seaweed should reach back.” A version of this review appears in print on , on Page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Darkness In the Land Of Steady Sunshine. Today's Paper | Subscribe 'Duma Key,' 2008 | Stephen King on His 10 Longest Novels | TIME.com Stephen King on His 10 Longest Novels By Gilbert Cruz Nov. 06, 2009 Author: Get This Book From The Shining to Misery and The Dark Half, writers have starred in many King novels. In Duma Key (607 pages), he looks at visual art’s potential for the macabre. The novel stars Edgar Freemantle, a construction executive who loses his arm in an accident and discovers that he has gained the ability to affect reality through his paintings. Oh, and there are some creepy dead girls too.

King: I had to write Duma Key from the standpoint of somebody who can’t draw a cat. I mean, I could draw you a cat, but you wouldn’t know what it was unless I told you. So it really was a case of wish fulfillment. If Desperation is a book that’s full of pain and unhappiness, Duma Key is a book where there actually is hope, because I was feeling in a more hopeful place. The two books are really the polarities of my recovery from my accident. I was feeling a lot better by the time that I wrote Duma Key, and I think it shows in the book. PODCAST Duma Key by Stephen King (2008, Paperback) | eBay Duma Key by Stephen King (2008, Paperback) 4.8average based on 4 product ratings 5 Sold by bwestervelt2 Est. delivery by Jan 30 Sold by collectingisfun2 See details for delivery est.

All listings for this product Any Condition Compare products others also viewed THIS PRODUCT Duma Key by Stephen King (2008, Paperback) TRENDING PRICE Synopsis Synopsis Don t miss the thrilling novel from undisputed King of Horror and #1 "New York Times" bestselling author Stephen King about what happens when the barrier between our world and that of the supernatural is breached... No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through... A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn t survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a geographic cure, a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. " Edgar, does anything make you happy? I used to sketch. Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night.

" Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.

The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural Stephen King gives us yet another novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.",King's latest #1 "New York Times" bestseller about a man whose near-fatal accident gives him access to vast powers of creativity--and destruction--is now available in a tall Premium Edition.,No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through... A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. ""Edgar, does anything make you happy?" "I used to sketch." "Take it up again. You need hedges...

hedges against the night."" Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.,No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe.

But also a slot for blackness to pour through...A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else."Edgar, does anything make you happy?""I used to sketch.""Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night."Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude.

He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying. Product Identifiers Ted Mahsun: REVIEW: Duma Key by Stephen King This review was published in The Star on 23 March 2008 . Everyone’s favourite horror writer is on the road to a return to form. DUMA KEY Publisher: Scribner, 612 pages ISBN: 978-1416552512 HORROR meister Stephen King is now in what could be called his “post accident” era.

Since his near-fatal accident with a truck in 1999, he has divided his fans, and had critics sitting on opposite sides of the spectrum. Either they completely deride his recent work, or applaud thunderously. The novel he released in 2006, Lisey’s Story (pronounced “lee-see”), seemed to be King’s attempt to break into the literary crowd, and it seems he’s proud of the book – his fans, though, were not so approving. Perhaps King sensed their disappointment, because he dusted off a story he originally wrote in 1973, polished it up, and released it into the wild last year under the name of his previously declared “deceased” pseudonym of Richard Bachman. This novel is Blaze, and its release placated King’s fans somewhat. The novel took readers back to an era when King was still raw, on the cusp of reaching the peak of his writing faculties. His latest novel, Duma Key, written “post accident” and published this year, might not win back his fans’ hearts completely, but it could be taken as a sign that King is on the way to returning to form.

The novel begins by introducing us to Edgar Freemantle, a successful contractor who is recovering from a near-fatal accident. A crane had backed into his truck while he was on a construction site, and, as a result, he lost his right arm and suffered brain damage that has left him unable to form proper sentences. Although the damage is not permanent, it’s frustrating enough in the short term that Edgar lashes out at his wife, which soon drives her to ask for a divorce. At the end of his rope, Edgar decides to take the advice his psychologist gave him to try a “geographic cure”, that is, to start life anew and away from his life as a contractor in Minnesota. Seeing a lovely beach house in a brochure, he falls in love with it and arranges to lease it for a year. The house is set on Duma Key, which is off the west coast of Florida, and when he sees it for the first time in real life, he fondly dubs it Big Pink. Duma Key proves to be a beautiful and exotic place, lush with undeveloped land, and since this is Stephen King, it soon works its magic on the newly arrived, still hurting Edgar Freemantle.

The first amazing thing he discovers at Duma Key is a totally unexpected talent for painting. Starting with simple sketches, he soon graduates to watercolours, and then to oils. His inspiration seems to be the view of the sea from his room – but sinister events soon suggest something else. The second amazing thing Edgar discovers at Duma Key is that these strange paintings of his seem to predict the future – and, usually, not a bright future. Edgar also discovers his neighbours, Elizabeth Eastlake, an elderly lady who has deep ties to Duma Key’s history and who is also Edgar’s landlady; and her caretaker, the erstwhile lawyer, Wireman, with whom Edgar quickly becomes fast friends. Like Edgar, these two people also seem to possess their own strange secrets. However, since Elizabeth is very old and suffering from Alzheimer’s, it will take Edgar quite some time to unlock her secrets, which ultimately are intertwined with Duma Key itself. What follows is a story that isn’t just about the strange and mysterious, it is about how people deal with life-changing events, how they manage with the second chances they’ve been given, and its consequences.

This is, of course, clearly linked to King’s own encounter with death: he and Edgar were both given second chances after near fatal accidents involving pickup trucks. This personal connection, combined with the brilliant characterisation and the intriguing way the story unfolds, may very well make Duma Key the best so far of King’s post accident novels. By Duma Key by Stephen King · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Fiction Literature No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through... A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. "Edgar, does anything make you happy?" "I used to sketch." "Take it up again.

You need hedges...hedges against the night." Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.

Duma Key - Stephen King - Book Review - The New York Times The New York Times Continue reading the main story When Stephen King accepted the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003, he drew attention to the cultural divide “between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction.” The award of the medal “to a guy like me” inspired the hope that “in the future things don’t have to be the way they’ve always been. Bridges can be built.” If Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley count as authors of so-called literary fiction, then King has been engaged in building bridges since that evening. The plot of “Duma Key,” ghastly in itself but certain to bring horrified pleasure to King’s enormous readership, could have been sketched on the reverse side of Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray,” a grisly examination of the magic of art. Sinister sounds, possibly vampiric, are audible beneath the foundations of the house around which the story is set, while the narrator blunders into generating malevolent forces beyond his control.

Edgar Freemantle is a former construction boss who has moved to Florida after losing his right arm in an on-site accident. He takes a psychologist’s advice and does “a geographical,” relocating to a solitary strip amid the “charm-bracelet of keys lying off the west coast of Florida,” where he begins to paint. There he settles into a house he refers to as Big Pink, establishes a friendship with his neighbors and beholds a natural splendor that cannot fail to inspire a recuperating patient with a new hobby. To Edgar’s surprise, everyone is knocked out by the pictures he produces. The local art critic pronounces him “a true American primitive.” The gallery owner assures him that it’s a compliment. Photo Credit Sam Weber As in much of his recent work, including “Dreamcatcher” and “From a Buick 8,” King draws in elements of the road accident he suffered in Maine in 1999, when an inattentive truck driver shattered his hip, ribs, spine and much else besides (in both his own and Freemantle’s story, a Dodge truck was involved).

The first section of “Duma Key” concerns Edgar’s frustrating pain and memory loss, his dealings with therapists, the storm that comes over his domestic life. When he becomes violent, his wife seeks a divorce, leaving only an anger-management doll for company. Even she is apt to get it in her “stupid yielding body” when Edgar is stricken by a memory blackout. A steady scatological flow runs through “Duma Key”; even in better moments Edgar is given to remarks like “you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.” Continue reading the main story The psychic theme kicks in early, with the artist’s realization that he has put a photographic likeness of his daughter’s fiancé into a painting, without ever having seen him. Later, conscious of his aesthetic powers, he uses them to heal his friend and neighbor on the Key, Wireman, another man with a damaged past. Wireman looks after the elderly Elizabeth Eastlake, the owner of Big Pink. Only she knows the truth behind the mysterious murmurings from below and the ghostly apparitions on the horizon.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Readers who will happily suspend disbelief when entering the supernatural realm might find it harder to do the same when faced with the reception of Edgar’s paintings, once he is persuaded to exhibit at the Scoto Gallery. He is definitely a “so-called popular” painter: even passers-by are deeply affected. For those who can afford it, “Step 1 is you tell me how much you want for that one. ... Step 2 is I write the check.” For others, like the faithful gofer and driver Jack, the response is simpler: “Dude, these are awesome!” The difficulty of evoking the wonder of graphic art that cannot be viewed has confounded many writers before King. Fending off the acclaim that greets him, Edgar dismisses his paintings as “reheated Dalí,” but it’s hard to square that comparison with the descriptions of four recent works, “the ones I’d come to think of as my sunset-composites.

To one I’d added a nautilus shell, to one a compact disc with the word Memorex printed across it (and the sun shining redly through the hole), to the third a dead seagull I’d found on the beach, only blown up to pterodactyl size. The last was of the shell-bed beneath Big Pink, done from a digital photograph.” The plotting of “Duma Key” is labyrinthine, if overextended, with psychically connected deaths and the appearance of zombies in the living room, but the characterization is flimsy. Edgar does not present himself as likable, and Wireman is as annoying as anyone else who dots his conversation with Spanish phrases and catchy lines from rock ’n’ roll songs, and who refers to himself in the third person. A great amount of emotional energy on his part, and eventually on that of Edgar and Jack, goes into the care of Elizabeth Eastlake, but the charm of this “Personage” for the reader remains obscure. After she dies at the beginning of Edgar’s fateful exhibition, leaving Wireman $80 million in assets, the latter makes a proposal: “Then what do you say?

Let us marry our fortunes together.” Edgar cleverly wriggles out of it by replying: “Simon and Garfunkel, 1969. ... I can’t decide now.” In his Book Foundation acceptance speech, King chided those who “make a point of pride” of choosing not to read John Grisham, Clive Barker or Mary Higgins Clark: “What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture?” Leaving aside the discourtesy of suggesting that his listeners’ reading habits were directed by snobbery rather than taste, the remark posits a view of a culture based not on the best that is thought and said, but on the highest returns at the cash register. If the term “literary fiction” has any meaning, it surely refers to a writer’s attempt to reflect something of the complexity of our lives in the interaction of characters. Little of the macabre events in Edgar’s story, the initial accident apart, bears any relation to most people’s lived experience. A sizable portion is devoted to unscrambling Miss Eastlake’s cryptic messages, then tracking down and stifling the ghouls to which they point.

Candlesticks and silver harpoons are found to be more effective than wooden stakes, and Edgar goes about his business in the vile pit with the commendable attitude that no zombie can expect to kill his daughter and get away with it. “Duma Key” is a buddy Western pitched as a horror story — which is not to hazard a judgment on its literary merit. To adapt Oscar Wilde’s remark in the preface to “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” there is no such thing as popular or literary fiction. “Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” DUMA KEY 'Duma Key' finds Stephen King stepping into his own life - USATODAY.com 'Duma Key' finds Stephen King stepping into his own life By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY NEW YORK  The icicle "was the size of a mailbox. I swear it was," says Stephen King, describing what could be a scary scene in one of his novels. But this was real life: Maine's great ice storm of 1998, and as King tells it, he was out for a walk with his corgi, Marlo, when the supersized icicle came crashing down from a tree and just missed the dog.

REVIEW: Tide of terror washes over Stephen King's 'Duma Key' "If it had hit Marlo, it would've killed him," King says. When he got home, he asked his wife, Tabitha, "Why are we still here?" Here, as in frigid Maine. Until then, he says, "we never really came to terms with the idea that we were rich." When they did, they headed to the west coast of Florida ("surprisingly funky," King says). At first they rented, then bought a winter home, near Sarasota. Ten winters later, King is visiting New York to talk about his latest novel, Duma Key (Scribner, $28), the first that's set in Florida. It makes use of a real-life accident that was no near-miss. In the summer of 1999, King, out for another walk in Maine, was nearly killed when a van slammed into him. His right hip was fractured, his right leg was broken in nine places and one of his lungs collapsed. One other King-like detail: At the accident scene, he remembers telling a paramedic that he knew he was going into shock.

He had done research on the subject for his fiction. In Duma Key, King's protagonist, Edgar Freemantle, a big shot in construction in Minneapolis, has another kind of violent confrontation: A construction crane falls on him. His skull is fractured, a hip is shattered and he loses an arm. He becomes prone to fits of rage. His wife leaves him. A psychiatrist advises him to find a new life elsewhere, so he moves to an isolated island in Florida. "Edgar's injuries were worse than mine," King says. "I didn't lose an arm, I didn't lose my wife, but like him, my memory was affected. I know a little about pain and suffering and what happens when the painkillers lose their efficacy, when your body gets used to them." When King writes in Freemantle's voice that "everything hurt all the time. I had a constant ringing headache; behind my forehead it was always midnight in the world's biggest clock-shop," he's not just imagining it. But he says the novel also was written "with some distance.

It's like Wordsworth once said of poetry: 'Creativity works best when strong emotions are recollected in relative tranquility.' " Of course, in King's fiction, tranquility usually doesn't stand much of a chance. In Florida, Freemantle takes up painting, which leads to all sorts of supernatural developments and a question: Can ghosts write on a canvas? The seeds of the novel were triggered by yet another walk. King may be called "the king of horror"— an unsolicited title that's "gotten rather old," he says — but perhaps he should be crowned the king of literary pedestrians. Five years ago, he was out for a stroll at his winter home. He recalls that he was still in pain from his injuries and could walk no more than half a mile (these days, he does 3 miles) and that it was dusk, "the time when the world seems to include a lot more than we can see." At a bend of the road, he saw a sign: Caution: Children.

He suddenly imagined "two dead girls holding hands like paper dolls." He didn't write it down, but the image stuck in his mind, which always tells him "there could be a story here." The girls he imagined never show up in Duma Key, at least as he imagined them. "But that image got me started." He hesitated about using Florida as a setting: "There are so many good writers who grew up there and know it so much better than I do." He rattles off a list that starts with John D. MacDonald and ends with Dave Barry, a fellow would-be musician in the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers who perform at benefits. King decided that Freemantle, who narrates the novel, would be from elsewhere: "In Florida, he's an outsider, like me." But King, who has set most of his novels in his native Maine, knows that exploring new terrain, even in a novel, is tricky. Already, he says, a reader from Florida caught a factual mistake: There's a reference in the novel to the Ritz, but at the time, the hotel had another name. "If I really knew Florida, I'd know that." The early reviews have been good.

King acknowledges: "I'm never going to get the critical attention of someone like Salman Rushdie or Martin Amis, nor am I sure I want it. But a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired. The newer ones read me when they were young, which tends to make for an easier ride and more sympathetic readers." Both his sons, Owen King and Joe Hillstrom King (who writes under the name Joe Hill) are writers, but he says, "they ask me not to talk too much about them. It's tough. It's like they're in the shadow of a big tree. Not that I'm a better writer, but it's tough to be related to a writer who sells a lot of books." In 2003, King was awarded the National Book Awards' annual medal for distinguished contribution to American literature, a prize that traditionally goes to high-brow writers such as Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion. His selection wasn't without controversy.

King, who has never even been nominated for the National Book Award for fiction, says, "It's a terrific award, but I know it's not for a book I wrote. It's for being Stephen King. It's like getting the Miss Congeniality Award. You're not the prettiest girl in the beauty contest, but you have a nice personality." The night of the awards, King had pneumonia related to his weakened lungs. A doctor advised that he would be better off in a hospital, but King told him, "I've got to do this thing.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing." In his speech, he took aim at publishing elites who "make it a point of pride" to say they don't read best sellers, and he asked, "Do you think you get social brownie points for staying out of touch with our culture?" That night, Shirley Hazzard, who won the fiction award for her novel, The Great Fire, said in her acceptance speech, "We don't need reading lists from Stephen King." That still rankles him: "It proves my point." At 60, he's in good health "as far as I know," and he rolls up a leg of his jeans to show off a skinned knee he got playing tennis. He has abandoned all talk of retiring. "I heard myself using that word in an interview when I was sick and miserable and addicted to painkillers. I no longer wanted to work." All that has changed. His next book will be a collection of short stories, but he and his publisher can't agree on a title.

He wants to call it Unnatural Acts of Human Intercourse, which "could be a tough sell in some markets." Serving as guest editor for The Best American Short Stories 2007, King says he rediscovered his love of short fiction, although few general-interest magazines continue to publish short stories. The short story has been replaced by the short chapter, he says, citing writers such as James Patterson and Robert Parker. "Also, movies don't help," says King, who writes a pop culture column for Entertainment Weekly. "People get socialized to expecting a single story, where they don't have to get to know new characters too often. When was the last time you saw an anthology film, like the Twilight Zone movie? "The only short-fiction movie to play in the past 10 years was Grindhouse, and it bombed. These two artistic fields are not the same, but the tastes of the audiences overlap in striking ways." He also has begun work on another novel, but he won't discuss it for fear of "bad luck. If I didn't think it would work out, I'd talk your ear off about it," he says and laughs. Or, he could just go for another walk and see what happens.

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Question: Who wrote the 2008 novel ‘Duma Key’?
Answer: Stephen King