Black House – King & Straub

Stories within stories.

There’s something I find particularly appealing about a story that contains snippets of other stories. Be it my own, the authors or the characters. Maybe it’s just me being a smart arse, revelling in a self-satisfied smugness when I spot a subtle reference or name drop. However, I’d like to think it’s more that I enjoy tying up loose ends or that I can enhance the reading experience by drawing links between books. Either way, there are so many stories within stories here that I was struggling to outline this review in my head.

Let us start at the beginning.

It’s 1987 and I’m a teenage metalhead, stuck at home with a hangover, probably grounded for the day. After hours of moping around the house, restless and complaining of boredom, my mam made a new suggestion. Why didn’t I sit down and read a book?

For the first time in my life, I did. 

She’d just finished Stephen King’s Misery, that years Bram Stoker Award winner. I devoured it that weekend and a love of reading followed, beginning with more King, then Shaun Hutson and Ramsay Campbell. So I knew when I started this blog that I’d want to review a Stephen King book – I was compelled to complete that full circle. 

This was the first time I chose to read a book primarily because I wanted to review it.

The book itself is a strange one to review, precisely because it draws so heavily on King’s other works. It can’t be your introduction to the author. Not because you won’t follow the story or be familiar with the characters, but because it’s so much better if you can appreciate the stories within the stories. Ideally, you’d have already read King’s eight-novel fantasy epic The Dark Tower and the King/Straub prequel to this volume, The Talisman. Of course, The Dark Tower series features characters and events from The Stand and Salem’s Lot so maybe you should start there initially.

On the surface, this begins with a reasonably straightforward premise. A child killer is active in French Landing, a fictional town in Straub’s home state of Wisconsin. Dubbed The Fisherman, he is compared by the local media to real-life child-killer and cannibal Albert Fish. The small-town police are overwhelmed by the killings, and we pick up the story at the point of the third murder.

Sections of this initial set-up felt awkward and just a little too light-hearted, considering the subject. I was very close to quitting after about 20% of the book – the story didn’t quite seem to have developed and this introduction was very descriptive with little action or dialogue.

Then things really picked up. We’re introduced to ‘Hollywood’ Jack Sawyer, a young but retired detective living in the town. He has an uncanny ability to solve crimes and has previously solved a major case in French Landing, before deciding to settle in the town.

This is where the stories within stories begin to appear, and it’s difficult to make sense of events without some prior knowledge. Of course, it’s also when the book gets gripping. In the Talisman, Jack was a 12yr old who embarked on a mission to find The Talisman in order to heal his dying mother. To do this he travelled across the country, flipping between our world and a parallel world known as The Territories. It’s a medieval fantasy world, with a beautiful queen (his mothers ‘twinner’), werewolves and the ultimate evil, the Crimson King. In the Dark Tower series, The Crimson King, with his ‘breakers’ is trying to destroy the Dark Tower, and therefore the existing world.

As expected, Jack is reluctantly drawn into the current case as he quickly realises that this is more than just a series of horrific child murders. Although at this point he’s unable to recall the majority of his experiences from The Talisman, he slowly begins to piece together fragments he does remember and with the help of a local blind DJ, a visitor from the territories and his dreams he begins building a picture of the wider events

In the meantime, we follow an elderly resident of the local old peoples home. A drooling, shit-stained 85yr old, who we suspect may be faking his Alzheimers. He’s sinister, foul-mouthed and inexplicably, seems to come out of a toilet cubicle, more than once, covered in someone else’s blood. 

Also central to the story is a small local gang of bikers. This biker gang, however, are all University educated, interested in religion and philosophy and run a local craft brewery. The gang leader, Beezer, was the first to lose a child to The Fisherman. Then a fourth child, Tyler Marshall, disappears. He’s the son of a local woman, who like Jack, has experience of The Territories. Both Jack and Judy sense that Tyler is still alive as the Crimson King becomes aware of the child’s talents. With Judy’s aid, Jack’s memories of his childhood journey gradually return and with it a clarity of purpose.

When we have this background it all comes together. But it does take a while and some patience. Remember, this book is nearly 700 pages in length.

So we have Jack’s team or as in The Dark Tower jargon, his Ka-tet. The police, a blind man, a biker gang and a beautiful and gifted woman in a local mental hospital driven insane by the disappearance of her child. Against them is The Fisherman, Gorg the talking Crow, The Crimson King and a sinister abandoned building called the Black House. The investigation, now a race against time to rescue Tyler, who may turn out to be the Crimson King’s most powerful breaker, takes place across the two parallel worlds. 

Once immersed in the book I loved it, but that did rely a lot on being familiar with previous works. When words like ‘ka’ and ‘opopanax’, or characters such as Blaine the Mono were referred to I was drawn back into the Dark Tower universe. But that’s not to say that it was all easy going. As mentioned, it was painfully slow to start and there were other parts where the authors had us check in with characters. I often found this distracting. There was a habit to let us know what the characters were up to when it turned out that they weren’t up to much. 

Overall though, it was a deeply satisfying book, and another with a Dark Tower link that I can tick off my list. To attempt a summary. It’s an epic novel, at times crime, horror or fantasy. The action takes place across two worlds as those working for the forces of good go head to head with The Crimson King’s child-killing and child knapping minions, who are ultimately working to destroy the Dark Tower – the glue that holds this and other worlds together.