Duma Key

by Stephen King

Pocket Books. 2008. 

800 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1416552963

This is a superior entry in the King canon. As you'd expect, it has the supernatural horror elements common to his work, but what stood out for me was the quality of the writing. It's outstanding, well above his usual level, and sustained throughout the book. 

The book concerns Edgar Freemantle, an ordinary man who suffers an on-the-job brain injury and develops clairvoyant abilities. His first name may be a veiled reference to the psychic Edgar Cayce, and his last may be telling us that the accident has freed his mind and made him a mentalist. 

These powers are amplified by an evil supernatural entity, Perse, who uses them to bend events to its will. As for what that entity is, that is never fully explained, although "older gods" are mentioned. So is H.P. Lovecraft, which makes sense because Perse would be right at home in one of his stories. A chthonic entity, as HPL would have termed it.

To give you a sense of how much I liked Duma Key: I began listening to it in audio book form during a long driving vacation. During vacation, I got through about two-thirds of the book. The very day we got home, I downloaded the Kindle version and continued reading. Last night I fell asleep reading it, woke up around 1:30 am and stayed up reading until I finished the book around 2:30 in the morning. That's how strongly the story and writing grabbed me.

Among the things I liked about this book: the depiction of Freemantle's relationship with his ex-wife and daughters (as a child of divorce, I can relate to that), and the character Mary Ire, a tough old broad who I found entirely believable from my 30 years in the Sunshine State.

I didn't care for the way King makes Jerome Wireman constantly use Spanish phrases, especially  "muchacho." True, there's a tie-in to the plot, but in this character's mouth it sounded false and overdone.  And I was amused to find that the idiosyncratic phrase "lookie-loos" is used to describe gawkers on pages 172, 264 and 325. This peculiar saying recurs in at least two other King novels. 

I have read many of King's books, a few twice (e.g. Salem's Lot, It and Pet Sematery). As I worked my way through this one, the Sarasota setting, artist protagonist and slowly approaching death-ship were unmistakably familiar territory. I decided that I must have read it before. But maddeningly, I had absolutely no recollection of vast parts of the plot. How did I forget all that material? This led me to wonder if I'm going senile, or if I'd just read parts of it before and somehow neglected to finish it. As it turns out, the book is an expansion of his short story Memory. That's what I read, or listened to in audio book form, years ago. Memory was later expanded into Duma Key. Mystery solved. I'm not senile! Not yet, anyway.

The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

Dell Publishing Co. New York. 1951. 

509 pages. ISBN 0-440-18608-0
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Communist witch hunt of the 1950s takes its toll on the entertainment industry in this gripping story with believable, nuanced characters and nicely drawn color about life in post-war New York. Shaw is a first-rate writer (the sort of fellow I'd like to be), and he tells a good tale here, as he did in The Young Lions  and Lucy Crown.  

In The Troubled Air, Shaw gives us a whole cast of secondary characters that are interesting and well developed, even if you despise some of them. But there's more. He also has something larger to say about integrity and principles, and the agonizing conflicts public figures faced during the Red scare. No doubt that's because Shaw himself was blacklisted during the Red scare.  

I can't wait to read more of Shaw's work. He reminds me of Herman Wouk, which is not surprising, since they come from the same city and the same era. I came to both authors by the same road: my father, who was the same sort of reader I am, and had their books around the house.