His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. At the time of writing about the events in 1960, he has written seven novels about the supernatural.

Wanting to do something 'big' they decide to hike their way over there to find the body and lead the police to it, partially in the hopes of a little bit of fame. It is a coming-of-age character-study novella set in 1960 Maine where monsters are not hiding behind bushes but instead live in the hearts of people - the setting and themes at which King excels.Ray Brower, the boy who went missing and the reason Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern took the camping trip to Back Harlow Road, is from Chamberlain, which is the setting for the King's first novel Carrie.

Chapter nineteen includes an unnerving encounter with a Wendigo, making similar sounds to those described in Pet Sematary. Gordie Lachance is both the presumptive protagonist and the ‘author’ of this story, a flashback piece penned when he was much older. The story is peppered in places with the stories written by older Gordon and full of reflections of the adult man reflecting on the important and defining experience of the end of his childhood. When they finally find the spot where the body lies, a gang of bullies led by John "Ace" Merrill arrive just after they do.

It does not appear that the constable is same Sheriff George Bannerman who appears in Cujo and The Dead Zone.