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In a couple of weeks\u2014on March 2nd<\/sup>, 2021, to be specific—Hard Case Crime will publish their third Stephen King novel, Later<\/em>. Although King is generally thought of as a horror writer, he has written numerous crime short stories, novellas and novels, giving them a unique twist. In Part 1 of a three-part series, I look at King\u2019s earliest involvement with crime fiction[1]<\/a>. Next week, I\u2019ll explore his more recent writings in the genre, including his previous two books with Hard Case Crime and the Mercedes series. Then, on publication day, I\u2019ll review Later<\/em> and look ahead to King\u2019s next crime novel, Billy Summers<\/em>.<\/p>\n When a young Stephen King went into Lisbon Falls with his mother on their weekly grocery shopping trips, he always headed straight to the drugstore, which had a couple of wire spinner racks stocked with hardboiled paperbacks featuring covers with scantily clad women — the same types of covers favored by Hard Case Crime.<\/p>\n In a 2013 interview with Terry Gross on NPR\u2019s Fresh Air<\/a>, King said his mother read Erle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie novels. He found the Perry Mason books too stylish and artificial for his taste, but he loved Christie\u2019s mysteries. However, he couldn\u2019t figure out how to construct detailed puzzles like hers. \u201cI was never built to be the sort of writer who plots things,\u201d he said. \u201cI usually take a situation and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Five years before he came up with the pseudonym Richard Bachman by combining Richard Stark (a pen name used by crime writer Donald Westlake) and Bachman Turner Overdrive, he published \u201cThe Fifth Quarter\u201d under the name John Swithen (also the name of an incidental character in Carrie<\/em>). The story is a caper about dishonor among thieves, so it made sense that King would use a pen name to differentiate it from the horror tales he was publishing in men\u2019s magazines at the time.<\/p>\n Stories like \u201cStrawberry Spring,\u201d \u201cCain Rose Up,\u201d \u201cSuffer the Little Children,\u201d \u201cThe Gingerbread Girl,\u201d \u201cBlockade Billy,\u201d and \u201cThe Man Who Loved Flowers\u201d feature serial killers and homicidal maniacs. A crime writer relies on his aggressive George Stark-like pseudonym to resolve a dangerous situation in \u201cRest Stop.\u201d In On Writing<\/em>, King suggests that his story \u201cThe Night of the Tiger\u201d was inspired by an episode of The Fugitive<\/em>.<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Doctor\u2019s Case,\u201d which first appeared in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes<\/em>, King gives Doctor Watson the opportunity to shine from the reader\u2019s perspective, as well as from that of Holmes. It is his only published work that makes use of another author\u2019s characters, although it\u2019s not the only time he attempted to pick up where another crime writer left off (see below).<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n In 1977, King moved to England with his family, intending to soak up enough local color to write a novel set there. One of the ideas he considered was a mystery set in the fictional universe of Dorothy L. Sayers — a Lord Peter Wimsey novel. He completed fifteen pages (one chapter plus the first page of a second), which he sent to his editor, Bill Thompson. It isn\u2019t known why he didn\u2019t finish it — whether Thompson didn\u2019t encourage him or he lost interest in it.<\/p>\n In this manuscript, Wimsey is depressed because his beloved Harriet died during the German blitz of London. The plot is reminiscent of a British-era Hitchcock thriller. Many years later, in Bag of Bones<\/em>, Jo Noonan, who owns a complete set of Wimsey hardcovers, dubs the moose in Sara Laughs \u201cBunter,\u201d which is the name of Wimsey\u2019s faithful manservant.<\/p>\n King and crime writer John D. MacDonald were fans of each other\u2019s work. MacDonald wrote the introduction to Night Shift<\/em> and his series detective, Travis McGee, was often seen reading a King novel. There had long been rumors of a \u201cblack\u201d McGee novel (the books in the series all have colors in their titles) that would be published posthumously. However, this proved to be an urban legend. After MacDonald\u2019s death, King approached his son Maynard, asking permission to write a final McGee novel called Chrome<\/em> to \u201cput a button on the series,\u201d with the royalties from it going to charity, but he was turned down.<\/p>\n King\u2019s novels often feature criminals of various stripes: embezzlers, thieves, rapists, stalkers, plagiarists, drug lords, child abusers, wife beaters and murderers. Johnny Smith helps the Castle Rock police catch a serial killer in The Dead Zone<\/em> and the murder of two little girls is an inciting incident in The Green Mile<\/em>, where just about everyone in Cell Block E was guilty of a major crime. 11\/22\/63<\/em> could be considered a mystery novel in which Jake Epping plays detective while trying to ascertain whether Oswald acted alone when he assassinated the president. Thad Beaumont in The Dark Half<\/em> is a crime writer and nurse Annie Wilkes in Misery<\/em> killed a number of her patients before kidnapping and torturing her favorite author. Former LAPD lieutenant Jack Sawyer is asked to come out of retirement to assist local authorities in the Fisherman serial murder case in Black House<\/em>. Dolores Claiborne explains why she killed her abusive husband in the novel of the same name.<\/p>\n Three of the four stories in Full Dark, No Stars<\/em> are in the crime genre. \u201c1922\u201d is the confessional of a man who murdered his hectoring wife and dumped her body in the well because she wanted him to sell their farm and move into the city. \u201cBig Driver\u201d is a revenge tale. A writer of cozy mysteries who is brutally assaulted takes matters into her own hands and punishes her attacker. She discovers that real life isn\u2019t as intricately plotted as fiction, so her plans don\u2019t work out as smoothly as she\u2019d hoped. \u201cA Good Marriage,\u201d which uses the BTK killer as inspiration, is about how someone might live for decades with a serial killer and never suspect — and what a person might do once they\u2019ve stumbled upon the truth.<\/p>\n In 2005, when Charles Ardai asked King for a blurb to help promote his new noir imprint, Hard Case Crime, he did so knowing that King was fond of the genre. Instead of a blurb, King decided to write a book for them.<\/p>\n Next week I\u2019ll discuss the way King has infused his crime fiction with the supernatural — both subtly and overtly — and how his Mercedes series evolved from straight crime to accepting that there are things in this world beyond explanation.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Parts of this column and next week\u2019s are drawn from my essay \u201cLiving in a Web of Mystery,\u201d which first appeared in Reading Stephen King<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/king-mystery-glassfloor.jpg?resize=257%2C350&ssl=1\")
<\/a>As a teenager, King submitted stories to Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Mystery Magazine<\/em> and Ellery Queen\u2019s Mystery Magazine<\/em>, rarely garnering more than a form rejection. His first professional sale was to Startling Mystery Stories<\/em>, although \u201cThe Glass Floor\u201d is not a mystery.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/king-mystery-killercrimes.jpg?resize=231%2C350&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Several of King\u2019s short stories involve gangsters and hit men. Robinson\u2019s wife in \u201cDolan\u2019s Cadillac\u201d was murdered to prevent her from testifying against a crime lord. In \u201cThe Ledge,\u201d Stan Norris is forced to take an unusual walk by the mobster whose wife he\u2019s involved with. The mob gets into the stop-smoking business in \u201cQuitter\u2019s Inc.\u201d \u201cThe Wedding Gig\u201d is about a jazz band hired to play at the reception for a mobster\u2019s grotesquely obese daughter. The wife of a hit man\u2019s victim finds an innovative (albeit supernatural) way to repay him in \u201cBattleground.\u201d Another hit man is given an unusual assignment in \u201cThe Cat from Hell.\u201d \u201cMan with a Belly,\u201d which will be reprinted in Killer Crimes<\/a> this year, is about a mobster who hires a hit man to punish wife her for gambling. \u201cMy Pretty Pony\u201d is a flashback from an aborted novel about a boy who grew up to be a brutal hit man. King fictionalizes an incident from the John Dillinger saga in \u201cThe Death of Jack Hamilton.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/king-mystery-umney.jpg?resize=269%2C350&ssl=1\")
<\/a>\u201cUmney\u2019s Last Case\u201d opens with a quote from one of the masters of noir, Raymond Chandler. It is the story of 1930s-era detective Clyde Umney, who discovers that his world is unraveling. Then he comes face to face with his creator, author Samuel Landry, who is remodeling Umney\u2019s universe prior to moving in. From Landry\u2019s perspective, Umney\u2019s life is ideal — an escape from the everyday horrors of the real world to a place where time never seems to pass. After Landry forces Umney to take his place in the 1990s, it doesn\u2019t take the former detective long to figure out how things work. He decides to write his own crime novel and set things right.<\/p>\n
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