We almost lost Stephen King back in 1999 to a car accident, and due to a painful recovery his writing career almost came to a halt as well. His comeback involved the completion of three Dark Tower books, even writing his near miss into the narrative.
Now almost 22 years later, King has (whether consciously or not) worked elements of that real life incident into another work. One plot strand involves eliciting the plot of a final book out of a recently deceased writer. More on that — later.
“This is a horror story,” our narrator informs us in his apologetic introduction. Which isn’t unusual for a writer most closely associated with the genre, but the cool-as-hell Paul Mann pulp cover may need some contextualisation.
In LATER, Jaime Conklin sees dead people. The ability he mostly keeps secret allows to talk to the recently deceased, a group who have no choice but to tell him the truth. When the highest selling client of Jaime’s literary agent mother suddenly passes away, Jaime is able to use his talent to illicit a final novel out of him. (In a parallel world, someone is sitting down with the ghost of Stephen King to find out if Roland ever got to the Tower).
Of course, as you’ve probably guessed from the Hard Case Crime logo on the cover, things go horribly wrong. Liz, a detective and sometimes lover of Jaime’s mum, blackmails Jaime into helping her pursue a killer. What neither of them suspect is that the killer may not be going quietly into undead life.
Thematically following The Colorado Kid and Joyland in King’s Hard Crime novels, this actually lands somewhere between King’s boys-own adventures and a ghost story. In the true style of hard-boiled fiction, there’s characters you simply won’t you won’t like, but the primary narrative voice is ultimately closer in tone to King’s collaborations with Peter Straub. If you like The Talisman or It, there’s a good chance you’ll like there. It’s also several hundred pages shorter than either tome!
For Constant Readers, and even us Inconstant ones, there’s a lovely plot thread that references one of King’s more famous works. It’s not my place to spoil it for you here, with the book still so fresh on the shelves. Suffice it to say that there’s a couple of gasp moments and some knowing winks at the reader from Maine’s bestselling author.
The cracker of a finale also feels like the culmination of several recurring motifs King has been carrying around. The penultimate claustrophobic chapters melt away as the tables turn on Jaime’s aggressor, get turned back again, all before spinning their way towards the inevitable. I was reminded briefly of the showdown in Doctor Sleep for some reason. That said, there’s a revelation about the face of Jaime’s father that feels like one of the few missteps in the book.
In the spirit of pulp, LATER is the kind of book you can knock off quickly. Unlike the airport spinner rack fare, this one might just linger with your a little longer. Filled with equal parts grit and unashamed fanservice, this is a standalone King that combines his mastery of multiple genres.
2021 | US | WRITER: Stephen King | PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime/Titan Books | LENGTH: 264 pages | RELEASE DATE: 2 March 2021
