In October, I realized that despite having read a lot of Stephen King, I had never read his first couple of works, so I listened to the audiobooks of Carrie and Salem’s Lot. Oh, Stephen King, even in only your second book you were overly verbose and needed editing. King stated in The Forward that a lot of this book was inspired by what would happen to Dracula if he appeared suddenly in the modern world. He had taught Dracula in a couple of semesters of college while trying to make ends meet. Imagine now if you could brag that Stephen Freaking King taught you Dracula in undergrad!?!
Salem’s Lot is the story of Ben Mears, a writer who moves back to the small town where he lived as a child. When he was little, he had a jarring experience in the old Marsden House and wanted to rent it and write about it, but it was already rented to two men from Europe who totally ARE NOT VAMPIRES, OKAY! Nor are they gay, although this book from the 70s sure LOVES to use the F slur for that. They are just a reputable antique-buying partnership that absolutely doesn’t want to drink the blood of the townspeople!
Anyway, as already stated in the title of my review, everyone in this book was an idiot. They all went to investigate suspected vampires by themselves, close to dusk, with no weapons at all. Buffy would be ashamed! The good guys start dying off quickly because they are stupid and eventually the vampires overrun the town.
I can’t in good conscience recommend this book unless you are a hardcore Stephen King reader, or need to read anything and everything with vampires in it. It was OK, but it was very dated and didn’t hold up so well.
