I find Stephen King really variable. On the one hand, he almost always manages believable characters and realistic-sounding dialogue even in the most bizarre of plots. On the other hand, sometimes the plots just don't add up for me. This is one of those. It starts out pretty interesting, with incontrovertible evidence that Terry Maitland did the crime except he has an absolute iron-clad alibi proving he didn't. The first half of the book is dedicated to this and there is nothing pointing to the supernatural - except we readers have seen the spooky guy on the cover, so, y'know...where is it? Then we FINALLY get into spooky guy territory. I didn't feel like the spookiness was grounded on anything solid though. There's some talk about myths and legends but it just seemed like King made up the abilities of spooky guy to fit his plot. The other bit was Holly Gibney. I felt from her first appearance that she comes from some other King book I haven't read, and after looking it up it seems to be the Mr. Mercedes series. So just a little - not a lot, just a little - irritating. But the thing that really spoiled it for me was Ralph. I felt it was 100% Ralph's fault that Maitland ended up like he did, but we're supposed to forgive and to like Ralph because Maitland coached Ralph's son, so he was emotionally overwrought. I really, really disliked Ralph. But YMMV; it's still quite readable, no long boring spots and a more-or-less happy ending.
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