Morality Tales as Horror and Suspense (Published 2010) (2024)

Last November, Doubleday published John Grisham’s “Ford County,” a collection of short stories from a man whose specialty is full-length legal drama. These stories were revelatory. They showed how much verve, suspense, instruction and moral ambiguity Mr. Grisham could pack into bare-bones plotlines. He could accomplish in 40-page virtual synopses what he normally does in 400-page novels.

And last November, Scribner published Stephen King’s “Under the Dome,” one of his 1,000-plus-page megawhoppers. It was a jampacked book with the heft of a doorstop, but it was also one of Mr. King’s most nimble, unencumbered feats of storytelling.

A year later the tables are turned. Mr. Grisham has stretched out into his usual full-length format with “The Confession,” about a wrongly convicted man on death row in Texas. And Mr. King has gone short-winded with “Full Dark, No Stars,” a set of four spooky moral tales. Two of our most dependably prolific and popular authors have both switched gears.

First of all he has invented Donté Drumm, a black football player who was convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of Nicole Yarber, a white cheerleader who was Donté’s classmate at an East Texas high school. Second, he has invented Travis Boyette, a sleazy sex offender and ex-con who turns up in Topeka, Kan. The two important details about Travis are that he has an inoperable brain tumor and that he claims to be Nicole’s real killer.

Now add the third principal: the Rev. Keith Schroeder, a Lutheran clergyman in Topeka. Keith finds himself in a terrible dilemma when Travis shows up, asks if he can make a confidential confession and then says: “I did it, Pastor. I don’t know why. I never know why.”

Mr. Grisham amplifies all this by adding Robbie Flak, the lawyer who represents Donté and has no time to listen to Keith; Gov. Gill Newton, who hopes to make political hay out of the case; Dana Schroeder, Keith’s patient and sympathetic wife; Reeva Pike, Nicole’s mother, who wants to exploit the execution; and Sean Fordyce, the sleazy television personality who practically salivates all over Reeva and her sob story. Mr. Grisham identifies Sean as “an Irish ass from Long Island,” and from that you may draw your own conclusions.

There’s a lot of padding in “The Confession.” The story’s outcome is invested with surprisingly little suspense. And the climactic moments play out long before the book is over. So this is a solid yet sluggish novel that is not one of Mr. Grisham’s barnburners. It emphasizes teachable moments over nail-biting ones, which is not something Mr. King will ever be accused of doing.

Mr. King’s “Full Dark, No Stars” has a lot of straight-up horror. The sheer size of its rodent population is enough to stamp it with the horror label. But it will serve as a page turner even for the reader who is aghast at some of the whisker-twitching particulars, especially in “1922,” the opening story. It is narrated by Wilf James, a Nebraska farmer who would seem a very sympathetic figure had he not cut his wife’s throat, thrown her body down a well and implicated his teenage son in the murder.

Who but Mr. King could make this a captivating situation? It is his outspoken belief that the best fiction is “both propulsive and assaultive,” and here is a case in point. By the time Wilf describes his crime, he has established a confiding, credible voice and a strain of deep regret. (Like the three other stories here, “1922” has a protagonist who makes some kind of Faustian trade.) So it’s possible, though not easy, to think of this tale’s gruesomeness not as a physical mess but as an expression of his tortured mental state.

The other stories are more contemporary, less rat-infested and easier to enjoy. “Big Driver” is a particular grabber, partly because its main character is, like Mr. King, a well-known author. His chortling is almost audible as he imagines Tess, a writer beloved for her Willow Grove Knitting Society mystery novels, which are big favorites with grannies. At the start of the story Tess is driving to a book signing in western Massachusetts. She has been asked to fill in after Janet Evanovich has canceled. Mr. King says that he dreamed up this premise while driving this same route for the same reason, though of course he fills in for nobody. But he made a pit stop, saw a woman whose car was broken down and had another of his itty-bitty flashes of big inspiration.

In “Big Driver,” Tess gets waylaid, then badly hurt. And she has never been more unhappily aware of her celebrity status than she is when wondering what to do next. Does she even dare report what happened to her? Will she be forever changed by the assault? Tess’s quest to restore her dignity and safety while also seeking justice turns into an especially enveloping display of Mr. King’s imaginative powers.

“Fair Extension” is this book’s darkest joke, about a sick man who can acquire health and happiness only by imposing misery on an oft-envied friend. And “A Good Marriage” — ironically titled of course — hints merrily at the danger signs in the long union between a bland, coin-collecting accountant and his unsuspecting wife. What’s most interesting about this story is not the terrible secret that the wife will uncover. It’s that Mr. King, who seems able to write compact tales or gargantuan ones with equal ease, can invest a bland, coin-collecting accountant with any kind of frisson at all. Whatever the length at which he writes, Mr. King leaves readers with a simple, one-word message: Gotcha!