Just when you think that the Grand Old Master of Horror has given you all that he's got, the very best that he has to offer and has NO more surprises up his sleeve...your hand reaches out for a paperback that you haven't had the chance to read for the past few years and--WHAM, you get yourself a SWEET surprise. This just happened to me and, since Stephen King is the author that I am referring to, I was absolutely amazed that this gem of a novel had escaped my attention over the past five years.

When I picked up BAG OF BONES from my bookshelf a few weeks back, I had no idea that I was in for a different kind of King story. The book snagged me on the first few pages and I was hooked for the next 700 or so right up until the end. As a fan of King, I usually know what to expect when I pick up one of his thick paperbacks and this time was no different...or so I thought. Within the first few pages I knew that this one would be different. I'm not exactly sure how I knew that or what I knew about BAG OF BONES but, right off the bat, this one felt different.

BAG OF BONES is the story of an author, a man who has enjoyed moderate success as a writer but who is not at the very top of his field. This is ok with Mike Noonan, though, because he has a broad fan base and has managed to make a good life for he and his wife through the years. Everything is going well for the both of them when one day, all of a sudden, outside a pharmacy in Derry (a town which King fans will immediately recognize from many of his other novels), Mike's world is turned upside down. His wife, Johanna, is dead. She died at the scene of an accident although she was not involved in the drama out on the road. Her death was unrelated but, still, she was gone...

Mike Noonan's life changed drastically that day. His talent for writing dries up and leaves for a very long time. Luckily, he has some work stashed away that has remained unpublished, so it is easy to fool his agent, publisher and fans into thinking that he is still at the top of his game over the next couple of years...but, his loss is so great that it puts a full-stop on everything in his life. This book is very touching, very sincere, very serious...as a reader, I felt like I was reading the life of a man who HAS REALLY BEEN touched by such things. Such is the power of King's style in this work.

When it comes to the horror element, there is none better at creating fear than King. This book proves that again to the masses. Although most of this is not the slash and hack of some of King's other books, the horror element remains consistent throughout. A spooky, come-up-from-behind-you-and-surprise-you type of horror that flows easily in and out of the scenes for hundreds of pages. Several times while eating up the pages of this novel I jumped in my seat on my couch and took nervous glances around the room in the night. I found myself turning on lights in hallways in the dark and trying very hard to avert my gaze from windows during the evening hours. This book had that affect on me, a thrilling and startling affect that made me believe that what I was reading was real and could actually happen to me as well.

That's not easy to do, folks. Especially to someone who has been reading avidly for more than two decades now. I applaud Stephen King for giving me that sense of reality in this book, for bringing me back to a place where I knew I could be taken while reading but a place that I hadn't visited for quite some time. I absolutely loved BAG OF BONES. A spooky, subtly supernatural horror story that scooped me up early and kept me floating on its currents throughout. The characters are real, the evil is real, the horror parts are as real as they can be.

To sum this book up in a single word--WOW! That's how I felt about BAG OF BONES. If you've gotten this far you probably noticed that I stopped the description of this novel quite a ways back there. I did this for good reason--wouldn't want to give anything else of the plot away in this one. Just take my word for it, if you like to get "the creeps" while you are reading, like to feel those tinglings going up and down your spine, like to feel as if there are things lurking around you in the dark when it's quiet...this is the book for you. King delivers in BAG OF BONES and in a big way. It was a startling work, a book that left me ultimately satisfied. And after all, isn't that why we all read in the first place?

I thought so...pick this one up, sit in your favorite chair and enjoy yourself. I surely did.