Scares are scant in King stories

FICTION

What's a year on Earth without another book by Stephen King?

The best-selling author -- and self-professed literary equivalent of "a Big Mac and fries" -- puts his mark on 2008 with his fifth collection of short stories, "Just After Sunset." But don't expect to be terrified/horrified/frightened or any other action verb commonly used in reviews of King's works.

These 13 stories are, unfortunately, mostly forgettable. And when they're not, they display an author who seems more interested in unpacking grown-up issues instead of unseen things that go bump in the night. You won't have many sleepless nights here, folks.

Of course, there remain various dangers and horrors in these stories, which span from the everyday to the otherworldly. As you would expect from any King outing, we have abusive boyfriends, irate construction workers, psychotic murderers, cats that just won't die, portals to other worlds and an intense tableau of New York City engulfed in a nuclear explosion.

"N.," one of the collection's genuinely frightening tales, is a nested story in which a psychiatrist's patient stumbles across a Stonehenge-like construction in the middle of a field. As you would expect, this discovery unleashes a malevolent evil straight from the pages of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as a nasty case of obsessive compulsive disorder in anyone who comes across it.

But not all the tales in this book are about horror. In fact, "Just After Sunset" reads like the least scariest of King's short-story collections. "Willa" and "The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates" are more love stories than ghost stories, even though both involve impressions of the afterlife. "The Things They Left Behind," another of the few memorable pieces, is a meditation on survivor guilt after 9/11.

Whether you find these touching stories disappointing or satisfying depends on what you bring to the table when you sit down with a King book. They certainly display a much more positive (possibly even cheerful) side of the King of Horror. As the author aptly puts it in the notes to this collection, 'Reality is thin, but not always dark."
Zak M. Salih is a freelance writer who lives in Arlington County.