A HORROR BOOK REVIEW FOR HALLOWEEN:
‘SALEM’S LOT BY STEPHEN KING. (1975)
BY SANDRA HARRIS.
I recently came across a paperback copy of one of my favourite books, Stephen King’s best-selling novel ‘Salem’s Lot, in a charity shop. It was a copy I’d never seen before so I bought it for a euro, thinking I’d add it to my collection.
I didn’t realise what I’d bought until I got it home. Published in 2021 by Hodder & Stoughton, it’s a reissue of an illustrated edition first published in the UK in 2006.
The American version, published by Centipede Press in 2005, was a deluxe limited edition, limited in fact to only 315 copies, personally signed by both Stephen King himself and Jerry Uelsmann, who did the illustrations in the book. Yes, there are illustrations! My God, I wonder who owns these copies and if they treasure them as they should.
My recently acquired paperback copy is a mass market reissue of this famous limited edition, albeit with a different cover and sadly not signed by the two creators. It contains the following:
An introduction by the author, dated June 2005.
Illustrations by the aforementioned Jerry Uelsmann.
All six-hundred-odd pages of the novel, ‘Salem’s Lot.
Stephen King’s short stories, One For The Road and Jerusalem’s Lot, first published in his short story collection, Night Shift, in 1978. Both these stories are some of the finest horror you’ll ever read.
Sixty-three pages of deleted scenes, available to read nowhere else…!
An afterword by Stephen King, in which he talks about how ‘Salem’s Lot was inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which he first read at the age of nine or ten. It was while he was teaching Dracula to the students in his fantasy and science fiction class in later years that he gave serious consideration to the notion of a Dracula for the modern age. ‘Salem’s Lot was born out of these musings…
The book tells the story of a small town in ‘Seventies Maine destroyed by vampires. Ben Mears, played by the dreamy David Soul in the 1979 two-part television miniseries that aired on CBS, is the novel’s hero.
He’s a published author in his thirties (just like Stephen King, lol) who returns to the town where he spent several years as a child to write another book. This time, the subject will be the Marsten House, an empty dwelling on the hill overlooking the town in which he had a terrifying experience as a child, one he’s never forgotten.
His allies in the fight against evil are as follows:
Susan Norton, the pretty young school-teacher who just so happens to be reading one of Ben’s books when he literally wanders into her life. What a meet-cute!
Jimmy Cody, the town’s doctor and an all-round good egg.
Matt Burke, Ben’s elderly former teacher who encouraged his writing.
Father Callahan, the local priest.
Matt Petrie, a young boy of admirably sturdy character whose obsession with UNIVERSAL monsters and all things magic and mystery come in very handy in the battle for the hearts, minds and souls of the townspeople of ‘Salem’s Lot.
On the side of the baddies are the fearsome vampire, Kurt Barlow of indeterminate origins, and his human fixer and right-hand man, Richard Straker.
In the television miniseries, Richard Straker is played by James Mason, a wonderful actor from Hollywood’s Golden Era. In 1979, however, he is physically frail, hesitant and quite obviously elderly. In the book, the character is portrayed as a frighteningly powerful individual, tall, strong, aggressively bald and generally intimidating.
In the miniseries, Mr. Barlow, played by Reggie Nalder, is one of the most terrifying vampires in television and cinema history. He is also silent. In the book, we hear him speak, and read his written words, which is definitely a bonus. He’s a formidable enemy, never before bested. Can Ben and his raggle-taggle band of valiant helpers defeat him now…?
Townspeople who tragically end up as collateral damage in this unholy war include the following:
Danny and Ralphie Glick, ordinary young boys of the town, and their mother Marjorie. All three characters are involved in some of the book’s most petrifyingly scary scenes.
Poor Mike Ryerson, the town’s gravedigger, whose scenes in the school-teacher Matt Burke’s upstair bedroom never fail to give me the willies.
These are the main ones, but there are any amount of minor characters who are affected in some way by the evil stalking the town, from the local cop to the man in charge of the town dump to the young couple living in the trailer park who got married too young and should never have had the poor little baby they abuse so badly.
These characters are all so brilliantly put before us by the author in these perfectly formed snapshots in time. They all have deeper stories behind them if only we had time to go into them all. As it is, though, they may be minor but they’re all unforgettable.
The book is well written, it flows easily and I think it’s possibly Stephen King’s best ever book, though it has a load of competition: Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, Cujo, Pet Sematary, It, Misery, The Green Mile and Dr. Sleep, the excellent sequel to The Shining.
I’m so happy I found this particular edition of this book in that charity shop, which led to me doing this deep dive into ‘Salem’s Lot this Halloween. Hope you enjoyed my musings and have a wonderful Halloween, all you horror fans out there! I love you all.
