(1975) Salem's Lot

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror fiction novel written by the American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot (or 'Salem's Lot for short) in Maine, where he had lived from the age of nine through thirteen, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection, Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1976, and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.

Complete summary of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of 'Salem's Lot.

Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second published novel, after Carrie, and it was published in 1975 (which I forgot to mention in the review). I really enjoyed ...

Written by: Wayne C. Rogers This review of Salem’s Lot has been a long time coming-thirty-five years to put it in a nutshell.  Of course, I wasn’t writing book reviews when the book first came out so I should be granted a little slack with regards to the time frame. Before I delve into the…

A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is.

**This post has potential spoilers sprinkled all over the place, so if you haven't read the book but plan to, you might want to come back later.**

In an interview with Highway Patrolman magazine, King said, In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. Ben quickly gets sidetracked when he meets and falls in love with local girl Susan Norton, but also when he starts to notice that something very wrong is going on in the town - and that all roads lead back to the house of his nightmares, the Marsten House. Ben and Susan team up with young Mark Petrie, a schoolboy friend of the Glicks with an encyclopedic knowledge of movie monsters; high school teacher Matt Burke; doctor Jimmy Cody; and local Catholic priest Father Callahan to investigate the growing number of deaths - and disappearing corpses. King's take on contemporary (1975) politics, like Watergate and the gas crisis, which he believes have eroded people's values, is an undercurrent throughout the novel. King could never have written the novel in the age of cell phones. The horror the reader experiences, the inevitability of the story and the characters' fates, is in exact correlation to Ben and his friends' dread at their eventual confrontation with Kurt Barlow. Before settling down with 'Salem's Lot, you might want to check your windows to see if they are securely locked, and look through your jewel box for a cross or religious medal to keep on hand while you are reading.

There is a lot of the violence and horror that Stephen King is known for (not surprising, since this is one of his earliest works). The book did a great job keeping me up at night, wondering if the neighbors were going to try to climb through my window and go for the jugular.

I had to force myself to continue on with the story, and at times I felt downright bored. That's because King is creating a new world. Jerusalem's Lot is a fictional town, and the true protagonist of this book. King writes in exceptional detail, describing characters in the setting in such a realistic way. So even though I didn't like how slow the pace of this novel is, I can appreciate the work it took. I am really amazed at King's ability to write such a developed novel so early on in his career.

'Salem's Lot has 228,316 ratings and 5,145 reviews. Nataliya said: There was a time once when vampires were ruthless predators and not the misunderstood ...