‘Salem’s Lot: Review

I’ve wanted to read ‘Salem’s Lot for a long time, but for some reason or another I’ve never got round to it, but I’m glad I have done so now. This project, of reading nothing but Stephen King novels for a year, has given me the drive I’ve needed to read those books I’ve had on my shelves for years and have yet to pick up and open.

In the novel, the main hero, Ben Mears, is a writer of moderate success, who has returned to the town of his childhood, Jerusalem’s (‘Salem’s) Lot, in order to write a new book, and expel some inner demons that those formative years had instilled in him. When Ben arrives he intends to rent the Marsten House, which looms over the town like a dark watchman, and is the place of Ben’s turmoil. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the house has been bought by the mysterious Mr Straker, and his allusive business partner, Mr Barlow.

Finding a room in the lodging house of Eva Miller, Ben sets to work writing his book. Ben also starts a relationship with a young woman in the town, Susan Norton, which doesn’t go down too well with Susan’s mother, or Susan’s ex-boyfriend, Floyd Tibbits.

Nothing seems out the ordinary until two boys go missing, Danny and Ralphie Glick, while on their way to their friend, Mark Petrie’s house. After Danny turns up a little while later, without Ralphie, and then later dies, things start to get worse for the people of ‘Salem’s Lot, as Danny returns as a vampire.

In ‘Salem’s Lot, vampirism spreads more like a disease, with the victims not really knowing what is happening to them at the beginning, except they feel a little ill and don’t like the sunlight. They also have no recollection of being bitten, or if they do they pass it off as a dream or nightmare, brought on by stress, and in some cases, as in Danny Glick’s mother, grief.

As Ben, Susan, Mark Petrie and a few others realise what is happening, they attempt to take on Straker and Barlow, and stop the situation getting worse.

King doesn’t give us any hard and fast rules regarding the vampires in ‘Salem’s Lot, and like his characters as they search the available myths and legends, find out which ones work and which ones don’t. It’s a “let’s try everything, and hope for the best” approach that we as the reader would attempt if it happened in real life, and it is this believability of the situation created by King’s writing, which makes the book so frightening. It is everything you would want not only from a Stephen King novel, but from a vampire novel in general.