From A Buick 8: Summary and book reviews of From A Buick 8 by Stephen King, plus links to an excerpt from From A Buick 8 and a biography of Stephen King.

The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous -- and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it. Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years the troop 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, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in 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.... From a Buick 8 is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews The writing's not bottom drawer, but this is truly a miscalculation after the emotional wonders of The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Seven-tenths filler, three-tenths story.   Publishers Weekly ....unlike King's chewy last novel, Dreamcatcher, this one goes down like a shot of moonshine, hot and clean...This novel isn't major King, but it's nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment.   Library Journal - Nancy McNicol King reveals much about how individuals come to terms with malevolence in the world and how the undertaking itself transforms co-workers into a family unit.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Dtran
This book was very slow moving. The characters are nauseatingly, perfectly submissive to authority. A powerful secret...a portal to another world...represented by a self-healing, sinister automobile, is kept completely a secret from everyone...   Read More

Rated of 5 by JImbo
It's a good 60 page short story, padded out with an additional 300 pages of filler. Very slow moving, good book to cure insomnia. I had to put it down for a few weeks, then start reading again.........twice.

Rated of 5 by Roderick Pitts
This was an awesome book.

Rated of 5 by Ray Riehemann
I thought this book was terrific, once again Mr. King delves into the unknown, and your not sure where it is going to lead you. Very colorful desciptions of characters and places. I though it was extremely gutsy of him to do a book with the story...   Read More

Rated of 5 by T-Bone
Would have worked better as a short story - interesting at times but ultimately unsatisfying

Rated of 5 by daniel h.
I felt Mr. King, using the Buick as a hook, raised a lot of philosophical questions about the unknown factors of life and death. I don't think he did anything new with these questions, and at times even cheapened them. His strong suit is...   Read More

...5 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Mysteries
  
• USA 
  
• Mid-Atlantic 
  
• Penn. 
  
• 20th Century (multiple decades) 
  
• Magical or Supernatural Elements