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Title: Save your time and money
Review: Don't get me wrong ... I'm a long-time fan of both crime fiction and Stephen King, so this novel looked like a sure thing to me! After reading it, however, I feel less like a fan and more like a victim of a practical joke. In my opinion, this is not a novel -- it's a piece of a manuscript that King should have kept in his desk drawer until he was ready to finish it.He sets up a nifty puzzle, then writes, apparently, until he reaches the minimum word count required by contract, then simply stops. After that, he has the gall to justify it in an afterword, explaining that an unsolved mystery is a metaphor for The Great Mystery of Life.That's all very well, if it's what King wants to do. But it should never have been published under the Hard Case imprint, which leads bookbuyers to expect a tale that adheres to the conventions of the pulp crime genre.
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