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Having been a long-time reader of Kings, and having plowed through every one of his books, with the exception of Dolores Claiborne (which I could only force myself through half of), I can say with some authority that there's been a decline in intensity over the past decade or so, as compared to what he used to write. It started with Tommyknockers, and aside from a few bright spots (Desperation, Dreamcatcher, a very few others), it's all been down hill, and it hasn't stopped with Buick 8.
For what it's worth, it's not a bad story, really, it's just that there's not much to it. I wanted a *really* good story packed into that skimpy 350 pages...I wanted it not to be full of mental ramblings about morals and music and death and Ned by the main character. I wanted a good conclusion that would explain what was going on. I wanted King to get off his "I'm a literateur" kick he's been on for awhile now. I was disappointed in all these, but at least I've filled another space in my book-case with a pretty jacket.
100 pages were good, and the other 250 were just filler and fluff like only King and Clancy can do.
Next!

Just because there is a car, or at least something that looks like a car, on the cover and in the story Stephen King tells in his latest novel, "From a Buick 8," is no reason to think this is "Christine" revisited. This is not a novel about a possessed car and half the fun is trying to speculate along with the book's characters as to what exactly is that thing in Shed B. The strongest similarity between the two novels is actually the switch from first person to third person narrative, although this new novel does that with much more frequency that the other work, which was divided like Gaul into three parts. King has announced he is in the final stages of cleaning out his literary cupboard and it is fairly clear that the blaze of glory he intends to go out on and write "fini" to his career is going to be the three volumes ending his epic of Roland of Gilead and the Dark Tower. So I did not start reading "From a Buick 8" expecting something on a par with "The Stand" and "It." I was hoping for something more akin to "The Dead Zone," and that is closer to the mark in terms of where this novel stands in the King oeuvre.

The idea that the greatest horror of all is the unknown is not exactly a new one and King has explored it before, albeit to lesser degrees than he does in this novel. The Pennsylvania Troopers of Troop D are telling high school senior Ned Wilcox the story of the mysterious Buick in Shed B. Ned's father was a trooper who was killed by a drunk driver and the boy has been hanging around the Troop, learning dispatch codes and such, in an obvious effort to connect with his dead father. As the Troopers take turns telling the story they kept warning young Ned that there is not going to be a punch line; as much as the boy wants answers, they just are not going to be forthcoming, get used to it, kid. Even as the story sticks to this line through the final downward path of the novel you find yourself wondering how far will King go. Will he actually come clean and resolve the mystery he has been developing, will he stick to his guns and show that sometimes there are no answers to the big questions, or will he find a middle ground that provides some inadequate explanation that preserves the uncertainty that is the story's compelling hook? Usually my disappointment in a Stephen King novel comes when the ending does not live up to the set up, and while it might simply be a case of lowered expectations this time around, I think he does manage to have his cake and eat it too at the end of this one. The ending is satisfying, even if it is not as memorable as what he has provided on occasion.

I heard tell that as he was recovering from his own close encounter of the worst kind with a motor vehicle King was tooling around Western Pennsylvania in the company of State Troopers. The geographical setting of the novel does not seem distinct from King's beloved Maine, but he does seem to capture the authenticity of police work for State Troopers (who are not exactly high up on the list of law enforcement types who are the subject of fictional narratives). You get the feeling that most of the stories that make their way into "From a Buick 8" were told to King while he was in the company of those real Troopers, and the Author's note in the back of the book confirms as much. This speaks to what has always been the backbone of King's work, which is not so much his ability to come up with nightmares a plenty, but rather how he could consistently convince us that his horror stories and tales of terror are taking place in the real world in which we live. Laurell K. Hamilton has come up with some horrific conclusions for several of her Anita Blake novels, but her alternative reality would never be confused with the real world. King simply tapped into our cultural consciousness and served as our conduit to what was out there on the other side. "From a Buick 8" is simply the latest reminder of that particular truth.

I have read the book, and the story was not too bad, but like Hearts In Atlantis he (King) does not quite manage to bring the story anywhere, and this occures to you just after reading the first chapters. It is a bit "out there", and off course it is ment to be, but did it have to be a car?? Could it not instead have been some "alien"-thing found, something really NOT of this world? Something no one had ever seen before, like the "droppings" of the car, perhaps. I finnished the book, off course, because you get a little curious, and you want to know what this "car" turns out to be the gateway to -which, off course again, you do not. King gives you a hint, but nothing rememberable. So, if you are a King-fan, this one might disappoint you a little. Not that it is bad written, it is simply just missing the usual touch one expects from King, and I really got the impression he has done it a little too easy for himself this time. This book has an end that does not reveal much, if amything at all...