The King of horror’s awesome foursome
IF IT BLEEDS ★★★★★ Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, £20
WHAT lies behind our obsession with rolling news, with other people’s disasters, misfortune and tragedy? When something horrendous happens, we say that we can’t look – but then find we can’t look away.
This question runs through If It Bleeds, the follow-up to Stephen King’s bestselling novel The Outsider, which was recently turned into a critically acclaimed TV series.
“Most people like pain, as long as it’s not theirs,” is one character’s discomfiting conclusion – and the starting point for this gripping story that once again stars Holly Gibney, the quirky, troubled private
investigator who appears in several of King's recent works.
Holly is settling down to watch her favourite show on TV, when a news story breaks.There has been an explosion at a local school and multiple children have been killed or injured.
As she watches, her attention is drawn to TV correspondent Chet Ondowsky, who is reporting live, covered in dust, with blood on his microphone.
Holly can't shift the feeling that there is something not quite right about Chet. But she can't put her finger on what it is.
However, when she sees him on TV again, the penny drops and she finds herself drawn into a mystery that threatens her own safety and that of the people she cares about the most.
While it follows on from events in The Outsider, and picks up on some of its themes, If It Bleeds is a standalone story that can be enjoyed without reading the earlier novel. But for fans of Holly Gibney, this exploration of evil – and just how thin the line is between passive and active enjoyment when observing suffering – is a must read.
If It Bleeds is accompanied by three shorter stories, each showcasing King's boundless imagination.
Mr Harrigan's Phone tells the story of Craig, who lives with his dad, and a crotchety millionaire who employs the boy to read to him each afternoon.
When Craig decides to get Mr Harrigan an iPhone, it sets in motion a chain of events that haunts him into adulthood. And Rat is classic horror involving a writer, a remote cabin and, unsurprisingly, a rat. But the best of the three is The Life Of Chuck, a strange story that starts in the middle of an apocalypse before morphing into something completely unexpected.To say much more would spoil the fun in reading it but it's moving and unsettling in equal measures.
The four stories are very different, yet linked by the power of human connection, and why it lies at the heart of everything we do. Full of vividly drawn characters and unsettling themes, If It Bleeds is another tour de force by a master storyteller.