Stephen King has expended great amounts of energy single-handedly keeping the population of Maine from spiraling out of control by writing creepy stories set in that general area. I've been on hiatus from King's work for awhile, and Duma Key reminded me why when I learned that the states of Florida, Minnesota, and Rhode Island, as well as the country of France are not immune to his demented yarns. So much for ever living in any of THOSE places. ;-)This was a pretty solid page turner from King. He sets up the story well, executes, and manages to put a pretty good ending on it to boot. The characters are fleshed out quite well, enough to get some emotional investment from this reader anyway, and the story is quite intriguing. The basic synopsis is this. Edgar Freemantle was a Minnesota building contractor in his former life, before the accident that took his right arm and very nearly his life. He ultimately ends up divorced, and on the advice of his therapist, he heads for total change of scenery on isolated Duma Key down in Florida where he starts to dabble in sketching and ultimately painting. As it turns out, Edgar is quite the gifted artist, growing moreso and painting at a blistering pace. Things are going unusually well of course until, as these scenarios so often do, things take a turn for the worse.
I often found myself taking "just 10 minutes" to read a bit before bed that invariably turned into a good hour or more. I'd highly recommend this one if you don't mind the genre King usually writes in (that being "spooky stuff").
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