Another day, another Stephen King :) and with that I add another 930 pages to the data inside my brain or call it inside my heart :) as Stephen King stories straight go to heart to scare the hell out of me. As much I am scared to pick any of his books it actually excites me big time to keep picking his books again and again. Quite a few of them have given me scary sleepless nights and weeks at times but now that I have graduated to his stuff, I am finding them super entertaining to say the least. As the title suggests I expected it to be a horror story but it turns out to be a milder funny one from his standards at least. Won't even go on to call it a proper thriller but nevertheless a superb time pass worth spending ten days of my lock-down life with. Four Past Midnight is basically a collection of four novellas from King with the very first starts one past midnight, second one at two past midnight and so on so forth. On an average each story lasts about 250 pages making it a perfect length, I wished he has written all these stories separately making them longer the better :). I must also add that these four were almost at par with the best mysteries that I have read and loved in the recent past.
The very first story of a pilot taking a red eye flight as a passenger sets the pace of the book in one heck of its own way. He is travelling from west coast to east coast, right after landing his own aircraft from an international destination which almost crashed midways to America. He gets a bad news and had to travel immediately but have no idea what kind of adventure this flight is going to take him on with a dozen odd passengers as survivors of a mid air mysterious accident (kind of an end of the world scenario). I must say the very first story is the best of the lot. Mr. King has a thing about other Authors, I have noticed that in his previous works too as he doesn't shy away from name calling in his stories :) and the very second story is about an Author who is being pursued by a stalker who blames him for plagiarizing his own original story and getting success too on the same. How this guy takes revenge on the Author and the mystery behind whose story was first published and who should get the real credit makes up for a superb cat and mouse chase game, but the big secret in the end totally caught me off guard and made me smile big time on Mr. King's terrific thinking. Third story was superb too especially because it was based on a Librarian who will go to any extent to catch those people who do not return the book on timely manner :) and if someone loses the book :) dude! Those are totally done for life, you've got to read this story if you love reading books and if you rent books from a library, I suggest you stay away from this story if you do not return the books on time :).
Fourth and the shortest of the story is about a teenage kid who gets a Polaroid Camera as his birthday gift from his parents but is not able to take one single photograph from the same. Although an instant picture camera, he has no idea whose pictures he is clicking even after he ends up taking the a dozen of them in the single day. The big mystery enfolds when he starts connecting the pictures :) and what comes out of it was not only nerve wrecking but the way finale is told, it gave me goosebumps, I am certainly not going anywhere near a Camera or a black big dog on the road for the next seven to ten days for sure :). And the best part is that the first and second stories are adapted as TV Movie and a proper movie respectively :) the one with the Author is played by my favorite Johnny Depp :). Right after posting this, I gotta go and find which platform those movies are available and watch them back to back.
Have you read Four Past Midnight? Do let me know how you like it and which one was your favorite story from the four. Also, do let me know if you have any other recommendation of collection of stories or novellas from Mr. King, I would love to get it in my next haul. And since this one has excited me so much and rocked my last 10 days, I am going to pick up one last book from him from my collection and start it today only (Bag of Bones).
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