Since the publication in 1987 of Misery, King has returned at intervals to the theme of writing and its relationship with reality. In Duma Key the hero is an artist, rather than a writer, but the preoccupation with the creative impulse as a powerful and sometimes dangerous force is the same. Reading the graphic account of the near-fatal accident with which the book begins is to be reminded that the author himself nearly died in similar circumstances in 1999.

There, it would seem, the resemblance ends. For at the time of the car crash in which he loses an arm, King's protagonist, Edgar Freemantle, is a wealthy building contractor with no experience of painting - a gift that emerges only during his recuperation. Taking refuge on a remote island in the Florida Keys, he starts to paint in a kind of frenzy, producing a string of nightmarishly surreal canvases that depict events of which he can have no previous knowledge. These are connected with his neighbour, the elderly recluse Elizabeth Eastlake, the only survivor of a once-wealthy dynasty. Through his paintings of her past, Freemantle helps her to face her demons, but in doing so releases a few of his own.

The author takes his time building his effects, so that one almost forgets that one is reading a horror story and not a mainstream novel. But when the shocks come, they are enough to make one jump; and the ending has grisly surprises enough to satisfy the most hardened aficionado.

Duma Key by Stephen King
Hodder, £7.99 Buy the book here

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