In Duma Key, we meet Edgar Freemantle, a very rich man, self-made of course, who has a horrific car wreck at one of his building sites. He loses an arm and bangs his skull up nicely, and he eventually claws his way back out to somewhat normal after a long bout of rehabilitation, despite the uncontrollable rages that cost him is wife of 20 years. His psychiatrist recommends that he have a change of scenery, so Edgar shops around and finds a house out on a very remote Florida Key, a very bright pink house that seems to call to him. (You know what that means…there’s going to be something creepy going on.) Once there, Edgar finds himself returning to his first love- art. He becomes obsessed and churns out pencil sketches, paintings all with a Dali-esque quality that haunt him in his dreams and earn him a following in the Florida Keys art community. Very quickly Edgar discovers that his art has a power to kill and to heal, and soon he discovers that there is something haunting Duma Key, something that wants to use his art to destroy his friends and family. Will Edgar save his family, or will the evil that lives in his paintings be freed?
I liked some parts of Duma Key very much, but others I felt were too much of a retread of places we have been before. Towards the end of the book, it roams at that point into Bag of Bones and Lisey’s Story territory with ghostie types and haunted houses. I like the supernatural mystery though, so it doesn’t bother me much, I just want to see something really fresh next time. What I liked? The fact that Edgar was a painter and I loved the images of his paintings and sketches that I conjured in my head. I also felt a real sense of building dread in this book, right up until the big climax and slowly whittling down the dénouement.
Overall, I am going to say Duma Key was a good Stephen King book, but it wasn’t great. I liked it, but I won’t read it year after year like The Stand.
Rating: 3 1/5 Purrs for making Raggedy Ann creep me the hell out
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