Richard ChizmarBesprekingen
Auteur van Gwendy's knoppenkist
Besprekingen
Gwendys letzte Aufgabe: Roman (Gwendy-Reihe, Band 3) door Stephen King
Chilling. Looking forward to book 3.
I do hope he continues her story though, with a tad bit more explanation about the background of Mr. Farris and the button box. A little mystery is great, bits to leave up to the imagination of the reader, but this is a bit too much. Maybe I’m missing the point, but I feel like there could be so much more to this story.
I personally enjoyed the Edgewood looking back excerpts.....these are the parts of the book that offer a real view of Chizmars childhood.
My one and only complaint about these books.......Carly Albright. She just makes too big of an impact in his life. He writes this character to be almost too important to him.....often writing what feels like gushing diatribes about her. She seems to take center stage whenever she's around. Even Kara....his wife.....seems to put her on a pedestal. Its reiterated again in the afterword of this book thats she's a fictional character......I just hope this is true..for Kara's sake most of all.
I am anxiously awaiting the next chapter in this story! Well done Chizmar!!!
I believe this is my first foray into metafiction......I wasn't even sure what that was until I Google it lol!
Chizmar does such an amazing job of creating a realistic " true crime" story, I wasn't sure until the afterword what was true and what was totally fictional.
I totally disagree on ALL fronts with the last reviewer.......who posted a diatribe ......and didn't even give Chizmar the limelight in his own book review ....instead chose to bash other writers all in the same go lol! No, this is a wonderfully written and executed story!
I'm off to read part two.....Becoming the Boogeyman.
By now Gwendy is in her 60s and a Democrat politician: a senator. I don't claim to know a lot about American politics but it shows capability and dedication for her to have reached this position and it's explained in the story that she has followed this path to help ordinary people rather than for the status of the position. She has also become a best-selling author of raunchy novels during a hiatus in her career. She runs for office again when she is persuaded that she is the only hope against an obnoxious man who is a follower of (now ex-) President Trump.
But the button box comes back into her life, brought by Richard Farris who is obviously very ill and terminally so. He sets her a serious mission: to dispose of the box in the only place where evil forces can't get hold of it, because they and their proxies are after it to destroy not just Earth but the Tower on which all the universes depend. (Dark Tower series references are scattered throughout the book, plus references to 'IT'.) Recent guardians, even if good people, have been suborned and the box has played on their minds to trick them into pressing the buttons that will bring about destruction, even the ultimate destruction represented by the black button.
A little more information about Farris than before is given: he stole the box from those evil forces. He definitely is not Randall Flagg: I can't see Flagg weeping or showing other similar human traits. So his sharing of initials with the Walking Dude from The Stand is odd. He seems a tragic character in this, and Gwendy becomes one also because her guardianship of the box seems to trigger off Alzheimer's and it then becomes a race against time for her to stay functional enough to fulfil her mission.
I found this less convincing than book one of the series. The relocation to a space station is rather a stretch, as is the one-dimensional evil rich man that the space company is forced to tolerate. The anti-Trump politics aren't an issue for me, but I think it would have been more effectively handled if done indirectly. His role could have been taken by Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone, a similar politician King wrote about, especially since the book already has echoes of several of his other works. I recently read 'Slow Horses' by Mick Herron, in which that approach was taken: it was obviously a portrayal of a real-life UK politician without calling him by the real person's name and caused a 'ah ha' moment for me. Whereas the approach taken here is to bludgeon the reader over the head with it.
Things became more surreal as the book went on: a sentient scorpion that zooms about in zero gravity? The ending is fairly ludicrous though there's a touching element of Gwendy remembering her parents. Though the scene that suddenly segued into her mother's point of view rather broke the suspension of disbelief. All in all I would rate this as an OK 2 stars.
Twelve year old Gwendy is exercising one day, trying to get her weight down having had a spiteful comment directed at her and aware that when she starts at the new school shortly she will be bullied if she is chubby. She runs up the stairs to a vantage point in the local park, known as suicide stairs, and at the top a man dressed in black is sitting who introduces himself in a quirky manner. She is naturally cautious at first but he says he has a present for her and shows her an attractive box covered with coloured buttons. Each represents a continent except for the black one which must never be pressed and stands for everything, and a red one which can be anything she wills. A lever on one side produces delicious miniature chocolate animals, one per day, which will allow her to eat her proper balanced meals but not be tempted by deserts. And on the other side, another level occasionally produces valuable silver dollars which eventually help her with college expenses.
The mysterious man in black, who has the initials RF (Randall Flagg anyone?) tells her that to guard the box will be her responsibility. She does so but as she gets older and college looms, what to do with it becomes more of a burden. One or two things happen which make her very wary of it. Meanwhile, it seems to have done a lot of good to her and her family without her having to actively utilise it.
On the plus side, I liked Gwendy as a character: sensible, kind, hard working and so on, she is an ideal guardian for a dangerous weapon. I wasn't such a fan at one point that to overcome a villain she flashes her boobs at him; surely some other method could have been chosen for her to distract a killer? And RF, if it were indeed he, seems far too benevolent. Rather than give it to someone responsible, wouldn't he just press the buttons and blow the world up? The book has some nice illustrations and it was a pleasant read, but on the whole I would rate it at 3 stars.
This book is simply about a copycat killer, no more, no less. It is filled with childhood meanderings, and the sections titled "Excerpt from Edgewood: Looking Back" were the lamest of them all, especially as they had nothing to do with the main plot. And the main plot is so much like "Silence of the Lambs" that the author himself references that book several times! It was still an enjoyable read, but I'm not sure if I'll pick up the next one, which is so obviously on the way...
All told, I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but once it hooked me in the first ten pages or so, I couldn't put it down--not even when the mounting creepiness made me wonder if I SHOULD put it down because I was getting so close to bed-time. There was no choice but to sit and read it in one sitting, enjoying every moment.
I'd absolutely recommend this one, and will look for anything else to come from these authors.
On Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan's side, we have "A Face in the Crowd," wherein we find that not only is hell other people, but hell is watching baseball. An old man who should have more regrets about his shitty life gets a series of Dickensian visitations while viewing a few games one week. He and his equally shitty buddy get off way too easy for my tastes. Not satisfying at all.
Richard Chizmar's side has a pedestrian serial killer story, "The Longest December," that was expanded from an earlier story called, "A Long December." (That naming scheme sort of sets one up for a boring slog, don't you think?) December would have to be much shorter to give this thriller-wannabe any gas. Regardless that weak Se7en-ripoff ending would suck no matter the story's length.
Quick and highly entertaining read. This short book was classic Stephen King, which I've missed in some of his recent novels.
I wanted to like this book a little bit more than I ended up liking. It has a plot and a premise that is right up my alley: a horror book about a serial killer set in a small town USA, written as a true crime book. But Chizmar is an average writer at best and he struggles to make this a compelling and believable story. He claims to have been an avid true crime reader for years, but so am I and the type of "crime" writing he presents mainly exists in low-end true crime publications that no self-respecting reader of such books would recommend to anyone. Or maybe he just likes trash literature wrapped up in real people misery? Heavy accusation to make but that's how the writing of this particular book came off to me from the "true crime reader" standpoint that he claims to have.
There's quite a few other issues I find with this ambitious project that doesn't hit all the marks: quite a few things in the book are not accurate or not even possible (the only FBI agent portrayed in the book is depicted as an asshole who doesn't choose his words while at the same breath author praises John Douglas of all people, absolute madness); the author is self obsessed between the pages and it highly reminds me of Michelle McNamara who was not a good true crime writer despite her book on EAR/ONS (GSK) having some merit by pure luck; there's a lot of homage paid to Stephen King but author tries and fails to create the same mood and atmosphere that King brilliantly helps his readers to capture and experience; the photos of supposed teenage victims (all girls) were sometimes questionable (do they really need to be shown in bikinis if they are portrayed as 15 year olds?); and the pictures themselves, despite Chizmar claiming that they were trying to be as accurate to the time period as possible, failed to do so more often than not. There's quite a few glaring issues with this book that I just listed, all of them breaking the pace or the story in one way or another. However the book wasn't all that bad, given I rated it 3.7.
I adored the book premise that I already mentioned, I haven't seen or read anything like this before and it was a lovely experience to try something brand new in the horror genre that combines my two favorite genres (true crime and horror). With all its flaws - it's still a pretty good book. I also like the reveal at the end, how it was handled was better than I expected and I am definitely giving Chizmar kudos for that. All of the characters (some based off real people in Chizmar's life) were neither likable or dislikable - they were just people and I liked that a lot as well. Lastly, I'd like to mention how after the reveal at the end of the book - everything seems to click right in place before you even read the explanation. Maybe it's just me, or maybe Richard handled that specific point of the story extremely well I cannot tell, but the gasp I gusped was real.
With all things said and done, this is not a brilliant, knock-your-socks-off King-esque story as it tries to be, but it still is a pretty decent book with a good plot, not that good writing, but still one helluva of a ride. But most importantly - I'll give Chizmar credit for not trying to make this book seem smarter than what it is, it would've ended up being worse if he attempted that. And the ultimate takeaway here is that after reading "Chasing the Boogeyman" I would definitely try out more of this type true crime and horror blend in book form. Hopefully someone else tries it in the future, I definitely am looking forward to it.
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