If The Shining had you on the edge of your seat, then Duma Key will have you turning pages faster than you can say "Redrum".
Duma Key is a terrifying read. The main character, Edgar Freemantle, is the embodiment of the American dream: he's a self-made millionaire with a beautiful wife and two perfect daughters.
Then it all goes horribly wrong. His truck is involved in a
n accident. He loses his right arm and part of his skull is crushed. His memory of convalescence is patchy – he vaguely remembers trying to stab his wife with a plastic fork – and his life falls apart. His wife divorces him, he leaves his business in capable hands and moves to a beach house in Duma Key, a creepy island in Florida.
There, he discovers a talent for painting and becomes obsessed with the horizon. And an imaginary boat called Perse. This, being a Stephen King novel, leads to all kinds of horrors creeping from the sea. The Perse is a ghost ship harbouring a very nasty secret, and it's only when he meets the octogenarian Elisabeth Eastlake, the rich landowner of Duma Key, and her faithful helper, Wireman, that he realises there's a ghostly history to the island that could kill them all...
Duma Key is part redemption tale, part art scene novel and part spine-chilling ghost story.
King gets beneath the skin of his characters – from Freemantle, a red-blooded all-American male trying to sort out his sensitive side, to Nan Melda, the nanny who tears at the ghosts of two children she once cherished.
The whole book reads like a Hollywood movie, with chapters divided into scenes, but that doesn't detract from the fact that this is a very scary ghost story indeed.
Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99.
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