THE RECENT death of Michael Crichton, one of the great names of popular fiction, sent a shiver of mortality down the backs of everyone associated with the genre.

Stephen King, another great name, has been feeling it for some time. Ever since the road accident in 1999 when a careless driver nearly killed him, King has had an acute awareness of the Grim Reaper stalking all of us.

Now in his sixties, it is no surprise that his latest collection of short stories is heavily marked by reflections on ageing and death. These are not all morbid, however. Instead he gives us offbeat, whimsical visions of a ghostly afterlife, uncanny premonitions of family disaster, a fight to the death between two old men.

The trouble with short stories is that giving too much detail on any one risks revealing the twist in the tail on which the magic depends. Suffice to say, though, that this collection features King at his most recognisable. For example, the story of two old men locked in a battle over a piece of Florida property centres on a blackly comic vision of one of them locked in a tipped-over, leaking portable lavatory.

There is a scatalogical, schoolboyish side to King's horror; he is a writer comfortable dealing with difficult subjects: from the menstrual blood running down Carrie's legs in his first bestseller to the cocktail here of blue disinfectant and leaking excrement.

He also takes us deeply into the neuroses of later life: the idea that obsessive compulsive disorder can be infectious (in N), the way in which exercise regimens can take over a life (The Stationary Bike), always, of course, tinged with the trademark King taint of the supernatural. In Ayana he delves into the last hope of the terminally ill, the miracle cure, exploring how a gift can also become a burden. As the title implies, these are stories written by a man who perhaps feels that the world in general is just a little after sunset but, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, is by no means ready to “go gentle into that good night”.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99; 368pp Buy the book

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