You Like It Darker:

Stephen King

Always fun in a chilling kind of way to open a book of Stephen King stories.

“You Like It Darker” is just such a book and the “Stories” mentioned on the cover is appropriate.

While most of the tales in the book fall under the definition of “short stories,” one story is about 150 pages, another is 90 pages and couple of them are about 50 pages each.

The book includes a dozen stories.

One of the longer stories weaves the tale of how two buddies in a rural area became world-famous as an artist and a writer respectively. The son of the writer pieces together how it happened after his famous father died.

In “Rattlesnakes,” King revisits a character from his novel “Cujo,” 40-plus years later, a man hoping to mourn in a friend’s beach house but is instead haunted by twin children who died by numerous snake bites years earlier.

“The Answer Man” follows the life of a young attorney facing the tough decision of joining the family firm in the big city or striking out on his own in a small town. At a roadside stand, he encounters a strange man who claims he can answer any questions. The young man asks. The Answer Man answers. The young man’s life is set into motion.

“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” is the longest story in the book. It is arguably the best story, too. Danny Coughlin has a vivid dream that reveals the location of a young woman’s body. He’s never had any premonitions in the past but he acts upon the dream, finds the place and discovers the woman’s body. He reports the body, thinking he is doing so anonymously, but his identity is soon revealed and he becomes the suspect in the case. He is pursued by a state police detective convinced that Danny killed the woman.

Given this is a book of “Stories,” readers may enter the 150-page “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” with a sigh of exasperation, thinking they wanted a book of short stories instead of a tale as long as a short novel. But King weaves his magic. Readers will quickly be engrossed by what happens to Dany Coughlin and turning the pages to find out what happens next.

The shorter stories involve an alcoholic wanting to share his experiences with a stranger on the street, a grandfather establishing a connection with his socially awkward grandson, a young man nabbed on the street in a case of mistaken identity, a family that comes to appreciate their grandfather, a man who claims his wife is not what she seems, a traveler who averts disaster for troubled planes, a man who is given a young pup but also faces an alligator, a man drawn into a scientific experiment on dreaming.

Many of the stories feature an older character as the chief protagonist, and that’s OK. King is older and writers should always write what they know. But older doesn’t make the stories any less terrifying. and terrifying is what King knows best.

Past Tense: Lee Child

With nearly 30 novels in the series, one would think we’d know more about Jack Reacher’s parents.

We know his father was a Marine who journeyed the world with his family. His mother was French and worked with the Resistance during World War II. We know they are both dead.

Author Lee Child penned a short story about Reacher as a kid; the story featured his father as a supporting character.

But really, past those few details, we know little about Reacher’s dad. We learn a little more in “Past Tense.”

Reacher is doing his regular thing here – owning nothing but the clothes on his back and the portable toothbrush in his pocket, hitchhiking across America. In New Hampshire, he runs across the name of the town where his late father was born.

Reacher stops in the town to find out a bit more about his dad and maybe see the house where his father was raised and perhaps meet a relative or two.

He gets more than he expected.

Reacher discovers there is a mystery surrounding his father’s youth.

Meanwhile, near the same town, a young couple stops at a wooded inn after their car breaks down. Soon, to paraphrase the old Eagles song, the couple learns they can check in but they can never leave.

Child divides “Past Tense” between Reacher’s search for family – and encountering troubles from locals – and the young couple’s travails with the people who run the inn in the woods. “Past Tense” is as much this couple’s book as it is Reacher’s. and that’s OK. Child has done this before and readers easily become invested in the couple’s story.

Of course, there comes a time when Reacher’s story and the couple’s story collide. Well worth the wait.

And so is the resolution of the mystery around Reacher’s father.