It’s been a while since I read a scary book, but if you are that way inclined, there’s one writer you’ll always head for and that’s Stephen King. I can still remember the night in 1981 when I had to get up, go downstairs and leave my copy of The Shining in the living room with the light on so I could go back to bed and not be scared out of my wits. Books like that don’t come along every day and since then I have been terrified by many Stephen King books – even Cujo, the one about the dog, which apparently he can’t even remember writing because he was off his head on drugs.
He’s older and more sober now and if Duma Key is not quite the same sort of scary as The Shining, it still has its moments of needing to be in a separate room. one of Stephen’s secrets, I think, is to have stupidly frightening and unbelievable stuff happen to nice, quite ordinary people. That way, you’re already hooked into the character by the time the spooks show up.
The nice ordinary character at the centre of Duma Key is Edgar Freemantle, a successful oinnesota contractor who just escapes with his life after being squashed by a 12-storey-high crane. Edgar loses an arm, his good humour, and eventually, his wife – which hardly helps his anger issues. So when his trusty psychiatrist suggests he moves far away and takes up something that makes him feel happy, Edgar finds a pink palace on an isolated Florida Key and starts painting.
The results are powerful – so powerful, in fact, that they unleash a hideous nightmare which slips out of Duma Key’s past to torment Edgar and all those who love him. If you’re in the mood for a hefty read that will boggle your mind and shiver your timbers, this is it.
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