Written : Bangor, Maine / Boston, Massachusetts / Naples, Florida / Lovell, Maine / Osprey, Florida, April 3, 1999 -- March 20, 2002

From a Buick 8 is set in Pennsylvania, just like Christine...

Stephen King, an evil car, and a teenage boy coming to terms with the fragility and randomness of life. Wait, haven't we read this before? Diehard King fans, worry not... Nothing like Christine.

Synopsis :
Shortly after his father, a Pennsylvania state trooper, is killed in a senseless automobile accident, Ned Wilcox discovers that the members of Troop D have a secret concealed behind their headquarters. Curtis Wilcox's friends and colleagues take turns relating the twenty-year history of the mysterious Buick Roadmaster locked in Shed B and how its discovery and unexplained behavior has captivated the tightly knit group of men for two decades. The Buick seems to be a conduit to another reality and every now and then it breathes, inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from.

"My wife and I spent the winter of 1999 on Longboat Key in Florida, where I tinkered at the final draft of a short novel (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon) and wrote little else of note. Nor did I have plans to write anything in the spring of that year. In late March, I drove back to Maine. My second or third day on the road found me in western Pennsylvania. I needed gas and got off the turnpike at a rural exit. Near the ramp I found a Conoco station. There was an actual attendant who actually pumped the gas. I left him doing his thing and went to the restroom to do mine. Here I found a rather steep slope littered with auto parts and a brawling stream at the foot. There was still a fair amount of snow on the ground, in dirty strips and runners. I walked a little way down the slope to get a better look at the water, and my feet went out from beneath me. I slid about ten feet before grabbing a rusty something-or-other and bringing myself to a stop. Had I missed it, I might well have gone into the water. I paid the attendant and got back on the highway. I mused about my slip as I drove, wondering about what would have happened if I'd gone into the stream (which, with all that spring runoff, was at least temporarily a small river). How long would my truckload of Florida furnishings and our bright Florida clothes have stood at the pumps before the gas-jockey got nervous? Whom would he have called? How long before they'd have found me if I had drowned? This little incident happened around ten in the morning. By afternoon I was in New York. And by then I had the story pretty much set in my mind."

Stephen King, an evil car, and a teenage boy coming to terms with the fragility and randomness of life.... Wait, haven't we read this before? Diehard King fans, worry not. Aside from the titular car playing a main role in the story, From a Buick 8 could not be less like King's 1983 masterpiece, Christine. If anything, this story resembles King's serial novel The Green Mile, with reminiscing police characters flashing back on bizarre events that took place decades earlier.

The book's intriguing plot revolves around the troopers of Pennsylvania State Patrol Troop D, who come into possession of what at first appears to be a vintage automobile. Closer inspection and experimentation conducted by the troopers reveal that this car's doors (and trunk) sometimes open to another dimension populated by gross-out creatures straight out of ... well, a Stephen King novel. As the plot progresses, the veteran troopers' tales of these visits from interdimensional nasties, and the occasional "lightquakes" put on by the car, are passed on to the son of a fallen comrade whose fascination with the car bordered on dangerous obsession.

Unlike earlier King works, there is no active threat here; no monster is stalking the heroes of the story, unless you count the characters' own curiosity. In past books, King has terrorized readers with vampires, werewolves, a killer clown, ghosts, and aliens, but this time around, the bogeyman is a more passive, cerebral threat, and one for which they don't make a ready-to-wear Halloween costume--man's fascination with and fear of the unknown. While some readers may find this tale less exciting than the horror master's earlier works, From a Buick 8 is a wonderful example of how much King's plotting skills and literary finesse have matured over his long career. And, most of all, it's a darn creepy book. --Benjamin Reese--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.