I was pleased to pick up this book as a charity shop bargain as I wouldn't have paid full price for it, having been too disappointed by other recent novels by King. It started well with a horrifying account of the discovery of a young boy, brutally murdered, and the hasty decision by the local police to arrest a popular member of the town, Terry Maitland, an English teacher and the coach for the local children's baseball teams. A number of witnesses apparently saw Maitland either abduct the boy or walk around later with blood on him etc, apparently not bothered who saw him. And as subsequent interviews proceed, more evidence against Coach T, as he is also known, is found. Yet he has a cast-iron alibi placing him in another town at the time of the abduction, attending a literary conference. That town is too far away for him to have been able to return in time to be seen subsequently as claimed. In fact, he was filmed by a public broadcast channel at the conference, and in the company of other English teachers at his school who all speak in his favour.

So far, so intriguing. The book follows several viewpoints. A major one is the detective, Ralph, who begins to have doubts early on as to whether they have made a big mistake. Despite this, the wheels grind on, and subsequent media and public reaction becomes rabidly hostile towards a man we are almost certain is innocent, with tragedy to follow.

For about half of this long book, all was well. It seemed that this was a straight crime novel, as were the first two 'Finders Keepers' books which had disappointed me earlier, but a lot better than those. And then - it derailed. I had given up with the FK series because I didn't like the continuing characters, and thought the first was flawed on a number of levels. The second would have been acceptable if the role that was mid-way assigned to the Finders Keepers people had instead been undertaken by the sympathetic teacher: I didn't think it needed to be a FK book at all. And reading the end of book 2, which telegraphed the introduction of the supernatural for book 3, I decided not to bother. So I had a sinking feeling when it became obvious with the present novel that the explanation was starting to develop along those lines.

I have enjoyed supernatural stories by King, especially early ones such as 'The Shining', but it seemed out of place here in what had the appearance of a straight crime novel. And it could have continued as such - I was already anticipating (wrongly) that the crime scene evidence had been tampered with, and there is a character with an agenda against Ralph who would've been in a position to do just that, in order to discredit him. That person could have wanted the wrongful arrest to proceed to the arraignment in court, to ensure that Ralph's downfall was as public and damaging as possible. Terry's fate could have proceeded unaltered. But if the character in the crowd: who isn't visible in TV footage in the actual novel had instead been on the footage as he should have been, and that character had been, despite an attempt at disguise with dark glasses and a hat, a man who resembled Terry, then a perfectly reasonable story could have played out, whereby a serial killer drifter was greeted by various people, and realised he could use this mistaken identity - and couldn't resist turning up outside the court to gloat at his cleverness in framing another man. That, and perhaps more emphasis on the corrosion of personal relationships and the impact on the whole Maitland family from the communal condemnation, would have made an interesting story. But as it is, the whole thing derails majorly. The ending does have some good action, but even the initial part of that could have dovetailed perfectly with the scenario of a jealous colleague.

The other problem I had with this book is the lack of editing. I had noticed from 'IT' onwards that King's books became more bloated, and presumed that he was now too big a name for editors to have the courage to edit him. There is so much dead wood as the story progresses, with people sitting around chatting and telling each other what they know, catching up on what the reader already knows because it has been shown in one character's viewpoint previously. And the inclusion of a character from the Finders Keepers series who then played a major role was the final straw for me. So all in all, I can only rate this as an OK 2 stars, mainly achieving that rating because of the tense beginning. ( )

FIrst half was thrilling and piqued my interest. In the second half it started to wither down, and it felt as if "the hero" conjured some contrived theory to cover up plot holes (perfect expample of deus ex machina). King also made an interesting decision to kill off the protagonist halfway through the book, and I felt as if his character was underutilized. It's still an enjoyable read, especially the first 200-ish pages. I plan to watch to show sometime later and see how it compares. ( )

Another book from the King himself to keep you up at night. Only he can make little towns and human nature terrifying in the worst way but then take it to a new level by adding a layer of the supernatural that we don't want to believe in but can't dismiss either. There is no end to the universe ( )

Wow, what a ride.
A suspense-filled murder mystery with a supernatural twist written as only Stephen King can.
The story follows the story of coach Terry who is accused of murder, while he was out of town...and the story gets a bit more stranger from there on.
A welcome guest appearance is made by Holly from the Bill Hodges stories and it was good to know that Finders Keepers is still in business. ( )

Definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. I would definitely read this again. King is one of my favorite authors. ( )