Salt City Sinner

  Steve paced the halls of his mansion, hands bunched behind his back.

Why does Stephen King get a pass on his role as a police apologist? 

  In two previous posts at Madness Heart Press (“Cops, God, and Stephen King,” posted in one chunk here ), I delved into my long history as a Stephen King fan and touched on a few of the misgivings I’ve had about his recent forays into vaguely horror-adjacent detective fiction, especially his stories featuring the irredeemable Holly Gibney. Holly is, in fact, the name of subject of his newest novel (due on September 5 th ). When I wrote those posts about King and cops/PIs, his cuddly relationship with murderous police officers and self-appointed snoops struck me as a (forgive the pun) novel development. Having now revisited some of King’s 1980s-1990s oeuvre, I now believe that this has been the case all along.

Posted on 8/25/21 by Charles R. Bernard - originally published at Madness Heart Press in two posts   With the recent release of Billy Summers, Stephen King has re-re-re-reinvented himself while pursuing his “true crime phase” – and he’s made a lot of money doing it. With Stephen once again King of the hill, I thought it might be worth sharing my review of his April 2020 quartet of novellas, collected as If It Bleeds .