Just After Sunset

I'm reading Stephen King's Just After Sunset. I'm only two stories in but the second one is a powerhouse. Called The Gingerbread Girl, which is the perfect title incidentally, it's about a woman who is coping with the death of her baby when she runs into a killer.

What follows is a fantastic story that raised my pulse almost as much as if I was the one doing some of the running in the story. The heroine is brave, strong and determined, but doesn't come off as impossible or a super woman.

As I've mentioned in some of my columns, there's something very satisfying about a horror story or film where the person in danger does the sensible thing. None of this "I'm going to put this shotgun and lantern down and go in search of my friends who have vanished one by one" stuff. There was really only one thing this heroine does that made me cringe, and that may be just because I'm on the paranoid side when it comes to being hunted by a mad person.

Anyway, pick up the book and indulge yourself. Just make sure all the lights are on and the doors are locked.