Following fifteen previous Stephen King horror novels, including the immensely popular Carrie (1974), ’Salem’s Lot (1975), and The Shining (1977), The Dark Half exploits fictions within fiction and paranormal phenomena that mystify and terrorize a cast of plausible characters.

Thad Beaumont, the protagonist, has been a successful novelist whose most popular works were written under the pseudonym “George Stark.” Writing as Stark, Beaumont created a fearsome embodiment of evil, a ruthless, robotlike killer named Alexis Machine. The gruesome fictional horrors perpetrated by Machine were responsible for Beaumont/Stark’s sales and literary notoriety.

Trouble begins, however, when Beaumont determines to abandon his Stark pseudonym and decides to write serious works under his own name. From the moment of this decision, he is incapacitated by writer’s block. He even suspects that he can write successfully only as Stark. Meanwhile, Beaumont’s former agent, the sleazy Frederick Clawson, reveals to People magazine that Stark is Beaumont, a fact that Beaumont acknowledges in an interview that culminates in the mock burial of George Stark and Beaumont’s confirmation that Stark’s career has terminated. A fiction or not, Stark refuses to stay buried in his mock grave. Ghoul-like, he emerges and launches a campaign of terror and grisly murders among Beaumont’s associates and loved ones. The objective of his brutal rampage is to force Beaumont formally to resurrect him and to recommence writing, this time under Stark’s direction. Confused, menaced, and terrorized by a Stark who may or may not be a monster of his own creation, Beaumont is plunged into a seemingly endless nightmare as he tries to gain credibility with his wife, his friends, and the sheriff and to cope with and then subdue Stark.

Mystery, suspense, and plausibility are lent to this scenario by King’s recital in The Dark Half’s prologue of a critical event in Thad Beaumont’s childhood. Troubled by the sound and vision of birds and wracked by headaches, the precocious Thad undergoes surgery for removal of a brain tumor. Within Thad’s brain, the surgeon discovers, and removes, living portions of Thad’s twin, who had been cannibalized by Thad when the two were fetuses.

King paces his plot through three parts that together encompass twenty-six chapters plus an epilogue. Following the essential information about Beaumont’s childhood operation in the prologue, part 1 convincingly sketches Thad’s domestic situation in Castle Rock, Maine, and introduces the major characters. The consequences of Thad’s writing block and his People interview, the mock burial of George Stark, the emergence of something from Stark’s “grave,” and Castle Rock’s grisly murders (the first victim, Homer Gamache, is beaten to death with his own prosthetic arm), open the mystery and raise questions that beguile the reader throughout the book. Is George Stark real? Is the whole story a dream? Is Thad schizophrenic, paranormal, or simply mentally unbalanced? On what grounds can credibility be lent to Thad’s suspicions or to George Stark’s “return”? What is Stark’s game?

In part 2, Stark takes charge of events, conducting a series of calculatedly horrific murders the purpose of which is to terrorize Thad into writing once more as Stark. At the same time, Thad wrestles with doubts about his own stability; he also tries to retain his wife’s understanding and win Sheriff Pangborn as an ally. Part 2 closes with the relentless Stark closing in on Thad by abducting his wife and twins.

In part 3, the tables turn against Stark. Without fully comprehending the paranormal events associated with this monster, Sheriff Pangborn nevertheless competently and wholeheartedly joins Thad in efforts to thwart Stark. Events climax with Stark, his hostages, Thad, and the sheriff...