Later
by Stephen King
Titan Books/Hard Case Crime, 2021
252 pages
Adult
What if Stephen King wrote his own take on that story about a kid who sees dead people? Published by Hard Case Crime (alongside Daniel Kraus’s Blood Sugar), this is King’s signature psychic battle in an (almost) young adult crime-horror wrapper.
It’s about a female cop who has fallen into drug dealing. When internal affairs is about to can her, she needs to find that big break, something that can make her a hero like she was once before when she found that mad bomber’s last hidden explosive, saving countless lives. She needs the son of her ex who can talk to the dead, just like the time before.
It’s about a kid who gets “borrowed”, not kidnapped, by his mother’s ex girlfriend Liz, who knows many secrets, a kid who is talking to a dead man when a revenant possesses that soul, a kid who knows there is some untold story about his father that he’s not sure he wants to hear.
It’s about a new twist on an old story, as only Stephen King could accomplish. “Whistle, and I’ll Come To You” by M.R. James, fresh from a BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation, finds its way lovingly into this narrative as the boy must undertake “The Ritual of Chud” with an unnamed thing from Hell. (Not to be confused with the movie Commander USA used to show on Saturdays.) Actually, he does name it, it’s a deadlight, straight from It.
But mostly, like all King’s work, it’s about people, the author breathing his unique insight into characters’ thoughts and motives far more than the horrific situations he puts them in… and sometimes painfully extricates them from.
I said “almost YA” because aside from some gory bullet wounds, it’s pretty mild horror… until the final scene where there are references to a drug kingpin and torture. The story is great, though, and King has fully redeemed himself in my eyes, as I swore I was done with him after I never finished From a Buick 8. The book was an easy read that drew me in from the beginning with characters I cared about, even the ones I was mad at.