Mary M. (emeraldfire) - , reviewed on 8/31/2013

Helpful Score: 1

The officers of the Troop D state police in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret since 1979. Since then, stowed out behind the police barracks in Shed B, has been a classic car - a Buick Roadmaster. In 1979, Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with the abandoned Buick. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this car was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Trooper Rafferty vanished without a trace, Curt and his fellow troopers knew the old Buick Roadmaster was worse than dangerous - and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it.

With Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated Trooper Rafferty's disappearance as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years, the troop eventually absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work; the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still life painting that breathes - inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from. In the fall of 2001, some time after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18 year-old son Ned starts coming by the barracks. Ned does various odd jobs around the barracks - mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow.

Sergeant Commanding, Sandy Dearborn, knows it's just the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become a part of the Troop D family. One day, Ned happens to look through the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers, and the secret begins to stir; not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well...

I must say that I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. It was very exciting and my goodness, what an imagination Stephen King has. I've said before that I'm always a little wary of reading Stephen King's longer novels - the plots of many of his books start off brilliantly, and then they seem to go off the rails slightly, at least in my opinion. Anyway, while I found that some passages in From a Buick 8: A Novel were slightly verbose, overall, the book managed to capture my attention and successfully hold it until the end. I give this book an A!

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