First Published: 1980

Rating: Great

To date, the only book by best-selling author Stephen King that I've read is The Dead Zone. I read it for no other reason than that I like the TV series based (albeit loosely) on the novel, and I was surprised to find that I liked the book just as much as the show. In fact, sometimes I like the book a little more.

The main character, John Smith, is--if you couldn't tell by his name--the everyman. He's kind, polite, funny, and he  always tries to do the right thing. He's the epitome of the "good guy." He's cool.

Unfortunately, he's screwed.

Out one night on a date to the fair with his girl Sarah Bracknell, Johnny has a strange run of luck on the Wheel of Fortune. Then, on the way home, the taxi he's riding in collides head-on with a drag racing teen's car, leaving  three people dead and the critically injured Johnny in a coma.

Time passes. Sarah Bracknell moves on, gets married, and has a baby. Johnny's mother prays he'll wake up and do the great works she's sure God has planned for him. Johnny's father guiltily hopes his son will finally slip away and die. A serial killer begins his spree. Greg Stillson starts climbing political ladders.

And after four years in a coma, Johnny wakes up with an amazing ability that allows him to see into a person's life with a single touch.

He's reluctant to use his gift--it scares people, and it scares him, and he'd rather go back to living the life he  lived before everything changed. But Johnny can't turn a blind eye to some of the things he sees--he can't refuse to help catch the Castle Rock killer, or try to save a graduating class of high school students from a fire he knows is going to happen.

And when he touches Greg Stillson and sees nothing but death and destruction in the future, Johnny--the good guy,  the everyman--knows what he has to do. After all, if you could go back in time and stop Hitler, what would you do?

King explores many themes in The Dead Zone--faith vs. religious fanaticism, personal responsibility, and the rapid pace of American society among them. None of these themes are too heavy-handed, though, and they combine to give the  book a fullness that it might otherwise not have. The novel is like a snapshot of a time when America was changing drastically, and throwing John Smith into the mix after he's lost a significant chunk of his life gives King the opportunity to discuss such issues with subtlety.

Ultimately, though, John Smith makes the book. He's a well-drawn character who's easy to relate to, and you can't help but root for him. Similarly, Greg Stillson is perfect in his role as the successful but dangerous politician, although I confess, I skim some of the scenes relating to his subplot when I reread the book.

That's partially because there's a good bit of exposition in Stillson's scenes, and while some of it's interesting, it slows the pace of a novel that's already over 400 pages of reading that is often far from fast-paced. Don't get me wrong--it's intensely interesting and well worth the time--but at times it has that sort of lazy, meandering feeling that you get from reading something like Neil Gaiman's American Gods.  

Though it's often classified as horror, The Dead Zone is more of a cross between contemporary science-fiction and  a biography of a fictional character. There are some gory bits--the serial killer subplot and an unpleasant scene early on when Greg Stillson kicks a dog to death--but the novel focuses on the life and times of John Smith and is certainly not a horror story. Ultimately, it's the story of guy who's trying to find some sense and purpose in his life--and that's something everyone can relate to, and what makes The Dead Zone such a great book.

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