Books Stephen King’s latest collection, If It Bleeds

by Stephen King

(Hodder & Stoughton)

Reviewer: Donal O’Donoghue Stephen King’s latest book, If It Bleeds, a quartet of novellas, should not be dismissed as the proli c Master of

Horror treading water. There is juicy meat on these bones with the plumpest of the pick, at least in terms of size, being

‘ If It Bleeds’ (from the newspaper truism ‘if it bleeds, it leads’). This is a solid stand-alone sequel to his novel, The Outsider. When a deadly bomb explodes at a school, Holly Gibney of Finders Keepers detective agency suspects that the TV correspondent rst on the scene might be more than he seems.

In the opening story, ‘ Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’ a cell-phone takes on a life (or afterlife) of its own. It’s a Gothic sketch, creepy like Poe and with a lingering aftertaste. ‘ The Life of Chuck’, a yarn in three de nite movements, rewinds from the eve of the apocalypse to the early days and dreams of aspiring businessman Chuck Krantz. A curate’s egg that veers from transcendent to mundane.

The fourth and nal tale, ‘ Rat’, is the best of the lot, a clever rethreading of an occasional theme in King’s work, writer’s block. It tells of an academic struggling to write his rst novel: a struggle that has in the past caused a psychological breakdown. But one morning he has a vision, and his novel, a pulpy western, unfolds in front of him. Leaving his family behind, he drives to a remote cabin and settles down to write. A few days in, amid a storm, he meets the rat.

In the ‘author’s note’ King explains the genesis of each story but is at an utter loss as to where ‘ Rat’ came from. It only adds to the mystery.