[image error]Plot Summary:

Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in the hopes that living in an old mansion, long the subject of town lore, will help him cast out his own devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods and only one comes out alive, Mears begins to realize that there may be something sinister at work and that his hometown is under siege by forces of darkness far beyond his control.

Mass Market Paperback: 672 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (December 27, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307743675
ISBN-13: 978-0307743671

Review:

I’ve read quite a few Stephen King novels because he is considered one of the finest writers of American literature and, being a struggling author, I hope to glean any information I can from the marrow of Mr. King’s words. When I first read King (started with The Running Man), I admit, I wasn’t a huge fan. But perhaps that was because Running Man wasn’t a horror book, and not King’s finest genre. So I picked up Pet Sematary a few years later and was hooked.

Salem’s Lot is not near as campy as Pet Sematary was, but it delivers a lot of suspense and fears. King is truly a master at the slow burn. He introduces our protagonist, Ben Mears (another author character for King), early on, and he’s a likable guy, dating the local town “it” girl, Susan. Mears is writing a book on the creepy old Marsten House on top of the hill, a house that has haunted him ever since he was a child and swears he saw a ghost of old Mr. Marsten.

Slowly, new characters are introduced: Eva, an older lady who runs a sort of 1975 bed & breakfast boarding house which Ben takes a room in; Matt, a teacher at the local junior high school who becomes quick buddies with Ben; the Glick family, who’s sons disappear on us and prompt the town into an uproar; the small-town constable, Parkins Gillespie, who’s suspicious of newcomer Ben Mears, and even more suspicious of the fact that people started disappearing when Mr. Mears moved into town, about the same time as another set of strangers took up residence at the old house on top of the hill, and a feisty boy by the name of Mark. It wouldn’t be a supernatural thriller without a priest, and King gives us the alcoholic, but still useful in his own way, Father Callahan.

The best thing about this book (as with all King books) is that the characters, even minor ones, are vivid and fleshed out, and that they each come with their own back-stories. They feel real.

Since this book is old, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that it’s about vampires, however, without giving anything away, this isn’t a Twilight or Vampire Diaries kind of book. This is good old fashioned vampires are soulless monsters and need to be hunted down and destroyed. I rather like King’s homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula sprinkled throughout the pages, and the powers he bestows upon his creatures of the night.

There are no shimmering men in this one, just a small town vampire fight where a rag-tag group of strangers decide to band together to fight the vampirism plaguing their town. ‘Salem’s Lot offers plenty of thrills that kept me up way past my bedtime.