Storm Of The Century
by Stephen King
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Stephen King started writing Storm of the Century as a novel, but it evolved into the teleplay of an ABC TV miniseries. Set in Maine's
remote Little Tall Island, the tale is all about vivid small-town characters, feuds, infidelities, sordid secrets, kids in peril, and gory portents
in scrambled letters. The calamitous snowstorm is nothing compared to the mysterious mind-reading stranger Linoge, who uses magic
powers to turn people's guilt against them--when he's not simply braining them with his wolf-head-handled cane. Don't even glance at that
cane--it can bring out the devil in you. Just as The Shining was concerned with marriage and alcoholism as much as it was with bad
weather and worse spirits, Storm of the Century is more than a horror story. It's creepy because it's realistic.
But it's also unusually visual. Linoge's eyes ominously change color, wind and sea wreak havoc, a basketball leaves blood circles with
each bounce. The 100-year storm no doubt hits harder onscreen than on the page, but the snow is a symbol of the more disturbing
emotional maelstrom that words evoke perfectly. And the murders of folks we've gotten to know is entirely terrifying in print. The crisp
discipline of the screenplay format makes this book better than lots of King's more sprawling novels--the end doesn't wander and the
dialogue crackles. Here's the real test: It's impossible to read parts 1 and 2 and not read part 3, "The Reckoning."
--Tim Appelo
On The Flap
They're calling it the Storm of the Century, and it's
coming hard. The residents of Little Tall Island have seen their
share of nasty Maine Nor'easters, but this one is different. Not
only it it packing hurricane-force winds and up to five feet of snow, it's
bringing something worse. Something even the islanders have never
seen before. Something no one wants to see.
Just as the first flakes begin to fall, Martha Clarendon,
one of the Little Tall Island's oldest residents, suffers an unspeakably
violent death. While her blood dries, Andre Linoge, the man
responsible, sits calmly in Martha's easy chair holding his cane topped
with a silver wolf's head...waiting.
Linoge knows the townsfolk will come to arrest him.
He will let them. For he has come to the island for one
reason. And when he meets Constable Mike Anderson, his beautiful
wife and child, and the rest of Little Tall's tight-knit community, this
stranger will make one simple proposition to them all:
"Give me what I want and I'll go away."
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