Billy Summers by Stephen King
This book is not your typical Stephen King product. The supernatural has no real role in the story. Near the end of the book, there's a reference to the Overlook Hotel, famous for being haunted in King’s terrifying novel, The Shining, but that’s it. (Many of us remember Jack Nicholson’s great line in The Shining movie, “Here’s Johnny!” as he breaks down the bathroom door with an ax to get to his family.)
This book is about Billy Summers, who is 44 years old and was a Marine sniper in Iraq. Billy, like so many veterans, came home with lots of PTSD issues. Billy has an interesting job – he’s a killer for hire. He does have his own rules about who he’ll kill – just bad people who have done bad things. He does a lot of clean-up work for organized crime bosses who need to get rid of someone who did a bad thing. It would be bad form for the organization to whack a member, even a sleazy one, so they hire Billy. He’s done over a dozen jobs since he came home from Iraq.
Billy is a lot like the character Peter Falk played in the 1970’s TV show, Columbo. Billy pretends to be a lot dumber than he actually is. He reads Charles Dickens and Emile Zola for fun, and he’s thought a lot about becoming a writer himself. But when he has a meeting with someone, he brings an Archie comic book with him, which gives people the sense that he’s a dunce.
Billy has an agent of sorts, Bucky, who sets him up to meet with Nick Majarian, a Las Vegas hood. Nick offers Billy $2 million to kill a criminal – Joel Allen – who is also a hired gun, but, unlike Billy, he shoots good people. Joe is going to make a court appearance in an unnamed small eastern city. Billy will get $500,000 up front, with the balance delivered after the hit. Organized crime doesn’t want Joel to testify at a trial – what he says could be really damaging to someone. Killing him as he enters the courthouse takes care of the problem. Besides, Joel is likely to receive the death penalty for the crime he’s being tried for so Billy is just saving the taxpayers money.
Joel is fighting extradition from California. Eventually he’ll lose and head east, but that could take a few months. The plan is to have Billy move to the Red Bluff sections of the city where Joe will be arraigned. Since no one knows when that will be, Billy could be hanging around and waiting for months to take his shot. He’ll have to blend in with his neighbors and be normal.
Billy’s contact in Red Bluff is Ken Hoff, a local real estate developer who seems to be in some financial trouble since a lot of his property is unrented. Nick and his assistants, Frankie Macintosh, aka Frankie Elvis, and the rather large Giorgio PIglielli, aka Georgie Pigs, are there to get Billy moved into his rental house and to give him his new identity.
Billy becomes David Lockridge, an aspiring writer from Portsmouth, NH, who moved to the city to write his novel. Nick also rents office space in one of Hoff’s buildings for Billy/David to do his writing. Billy managed to convince Nick that he could pull off being a writer so he has to write something. He decides to do an autobiography but to disguise it as a recounting of someone else's life. King makes it easy to separate what’s going on in real time in the book and what’s in the memoir Billy’s writing by using different typefaces for each element.
Billy has misgivings about the whole deal. There’s a catch somewhere. He’s getting too much money for the job so something’s not right. Hoff is giving off a bad vibe – he’s hiding things from Billy, who is pretty sure that once he does his job, he won’t get the money. His employers will probably try to get rid of him.
Billy moves into a nice house on a nice street with nice neighbors. Billy bonds with the locals, who give him tips about how to have a great lawn. The couple in the house next to his, Jamal and Corrine, have a delightful daughter, Shanice, that Billy likes.
Billy settles into his new office. Nick, the guy who hired him, gives him a new MacBook Pro laptop which Billy figures is sending everything he does on it back to Nick. Another neighbor, the Fazios, have a son, Danny, that Billy also becomes close to. Another couple, the Raglands, have no kids. They drink a lot and are obnoxious, but no neighborhood is perfect.
Billy meets some of the people who are in his office building. A lot of space is rented by a debt collection company, Business Solutions – (BS!) – whose employees use hard bar pressure to get people to pay up. Billy becomes friendly with Colin White, a flamboyant gay man who is one of BS’s best collectors. Colin is delightful in person, but when he’s on the phone, he’s merciless.
Billy buys another MacBook Pro (MBP) to use when he doesn’t want his employers to know what he’s really doing. But Billy uses the compromised MBP that Nick gave him to write the autobiography which he is positioning as a novel. Billy has an agent, George Russo (who is really Georgie Pigs), who Billy knows is with Nick. The book is based on Billy’s life but no one except Billy knows that. He calls his book The Story of Benjy Compson. Benjy is a character in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, one of Billy’s favorite books. He’s pretty sure that Nick and his thugs don’t know that.
Billy starts the book by describing the murder of his sister, Cassie, who was murdered by his mother’s itinerant boyfriend who was a psychopath. Billy was there and couldn’t do anything about it. He carries that guilt with him to this day. He also carries the PTSD from that with him, which is compounded by the traumatic stress he experienced in Iraq. Billy is a mess. While writing about what happened to his sister is hard, it is also cathartic.
Billy needs to outwit the guys who hired him or else he’ll be dead. He buys things to totally change his appearance. He needs to rent an apartment under a new fake identity so he can get away from his Davis Lockridge fake identity. Billy has several fake identities that he prepared just for this type of situation. He will become Dalton Curtis Smith of Stowe, Vermont, as he makes his escape. Dalton is older and fatter, an effect created by a blow-up pregnancy belt that Billy bought on Amazon.
Dalton Smith – aka Billy – rents an apartment in a rough part of town. His costume makes him look older and fatter than he really is. He’s now a blond with thick eyeglasses. He has established a new identity. Billy also calls up Bucky, his agent, and asks him to send Billy’s emergency kit that has lots of material to help form even more new identities as needed. Billy/Dalton buys a bunch of disposable cell phones, three laptops, and an old car that he parks in a garage near Dalton’s apartment.
Back at his office, he runs into Phyllis Stanhope, who works in an accounting firm in the building. She asks Billy out and he accepts. Billy is attracted to her but he can’t get close to anyone since he’s there to kill someone and then bolt. He’s also concerned that he’s getting too close to the neighbors on his street. He likes the normalcy of being a regular person. Again, that’s not part of being a killer for hire.
Nick and crew invite Billy over to dinner. Nick has set up a couple of diversions to help Billy get away after the job is done. Nick’s thugs will set off flash bang grenades near the courthouse after Billy takes the shot. That will divert the police away from Billy as he escapes via a route that Nick set out. Nick also has a fake Department of Public Works truck with fake employees to take Billy away from the city in the DPW truck. Finally, Nick is going to have his guys light a building on fire a few miles away from the court house. Billy’s not buying any of this but he does nod appreciatively to Nick. Billy senses that this is a set-up designed to make it easier to kill him.
Ken Hoff delivers the rifle and Leupold scope to Billy. It’s an M24 in a golf bag. That’s the rifle Billy used in Iraq. Billy takes it apart and checks it out. It’s good.
Despite wanting to limit his entanglements, Billy has become friends with Colin White, the superstar collection agency gay guy. Colin is a hoot, often wearing Queers for Trump T-shirts. Billy also does a lot of things with his neighbors – cook-outs, going to shows, helping people with house projects. As August comes on, Nick also has become close to a lot of people that he will disappoint when they learn that he killed a man with a sniper rifle. Nick has never had so many positive relationships. He will miss them.
Billy meets the two guys, Dana and Edison, who will be the fake DPW employees to take him away from the crime scene. He gets bad vibes from both and is convinced that Nick’s plan is to get rid of Billy and Ken Hoff right after Joel is killed. Billy wishes that he had turned down the job but it’s too late now. He has to survive.
Billy’s been in the city all summer before he finds out that Joel will be heading to court right after Labor Day. Billy makes plans for his escape. He pulls anything incriminating off the MacBook Pro that Nick gave him and puts the data on thumb drives. He throws out all of the sim cards he has in his cell phones and keeps one burner phone that no one knows about. David Lockridge is about to cease to exist. Dalton Smith, the chubby blond, will take his place, but Billy will dress up like the flamboyant Colin in order to make his initial escape.
Around 9 AM, Billy goes to a men’s room on a high floor of his office building and kills Joel. He ditches the gun after wiping it clean and heads off to the secret apartment Dalton Smith rented. Billy changes costumes as he wanders away from the crime scene and gets to the apartment which is in the basement, something he wanted so he could see outside near the door. He hangs out for a few hours and calls Bucky, his agent, to give him an update and to try to figure out how to get the $1.5 million that Billy is still owed for the job.
Billy/Dalton has made friends with the couple upstairs, the Jansens. They inherited some money from the wife’s mother and are heading off for a vacation, a good thing for Billy/Dalton as he hides out in his basement apartment. He’s not sure how long he’ll stay there. The police identified David Lockridge as Billy Summers within a few hours and they knew all about his sniper skills. The cops know nothing about Dalton so it’s safe for him to hang out until the heat dies down.
Billy decides to call Giorgio, aka Georgie Pigs, who pretended to be David Lockridge’s literary agent. Billy sort of trusts him because they did a lot of work together. Georgie doesn’t get back to him right away. Billy/Dalton reads the local paper online and sees that Ken Hoff is dead – supposedly suicide – but Ken was a loose end that had to be eliminated as is Billy.
The cops have identified Georgie Pigs as part of the kill plot and are looking for him all over the area so Billy/Dalton has to stay put. He has time to work on his book. He’s decided to come clean – he replaced all of the references to Benjy with Billy so readers will know that this is Billy Summers’ life story.
Billy writes about his days in Marine boot camp where he dazzled his superiors with his shooting skills. Off to sniper school and then off to Ramadi, Iraq, in 2003. Even though President George W. Bush had declared “Mission Accomplished” months earlier, it wasn’t. The insurgents mounted a first comeback and a lot of people lost their lives. Billy was sent to Fallujah in 2004. He did some fancy long-distance shooting to kill terrorist big-wigs. He also saw some nasty house-to-house action and witnessed the deaths of many of his friends, as well as innocent Iraqis. Billy earned a lot of medals including the Bronze and Silver Stars, but he never quite figured out what we were fighting for in the desert.
One night Billy is watching TV as a storm hits the city. He hears a noise and looks outside. He sees three guys laughing and dumping a young woman in the wet street. They take off in a car and Billy goes out to help her. Some of her clothes are missing and she has been drugged and raped. She keeps choking on her vomit but he gets her into the apartment and stabilizes her.
Billy looks at her wallet and sees that the woman is twenty-year old Alice Maxwell from Rhode Island. She’s about to go into shock but Billy takes care of that. He learned medical skills in Iraq.
After sleeping for 24 hours, Alice is coherent. She thinks that Billy is the one who raped her. After some time, she starts to believe that Billy didn’t rape her. She does wonder why he didn’t take her to a hospital and call the police. As Billy/Dalton talks to her, he realizes that she complicates his escape plans.
Alice works in a coffee shop downtown. She met a handsome young man, Tripp, who asked her out. They did go out and things were fine until Tripp invited her to his apartment before they went out on the second date. His two roommates were there and Alice was nervous. She only had one drink but has no memory of anything that happened that night. Tripp drugged her and he and his roomies took turns raping her.
Billy wants justice for Alice. She tells him what kind of car he drove and where he lived.
Billy is going out to get some underwear for Alice and a morning-after pill to take care of any potential pregnancy. He puts on his Dalton fat-blond-guy outfit. Alice does a double take as Billy leaves the apartment. He succeeds in his mission.
Billy regularly writes his book. He has a lot on Fallujah, considered by many to be the biggest and bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. He essentially summarizes what happened. Captain Jamieson, a favorite with his troops, lost a leg to an improvised explosive device. While he was being treated in the field, Billy and his fellow soldiers sang to the captain which seemed to ease his pain.
Billy and Alice settle in like roommates. They suggest different TV shows for each to watch and eat junk food while watching. It’s remarkably normal, considering that Billy is the subject of a nationwide manhunt for killing Joel. Alice has panic attacks when she flashes back to what happened to her. Billy teaches her to sing an old childhood favorite, Teddy Bears Picnic, when she gets flustered. It works to calm her down. It’s the same technique he used in Iraq to get through tough times.
On the fourth day that they’ve been together, Alice wants Billy to download a book for her which he does. She’s seen him writing on his laptop and he explains what he’s doing. Billy lets her read what he’s written, a huge act of faith. She is shocked by the rough life that Billy has had.
Billy’s book One of the recurring devices King uses is having Billy write his book, which gives the reader details about the trauma that Billy suffered before he became a hired gun. We learn that as an 11-year old, Billy shot his mother’s boyfriend after he killed Billy’s sister, Cassie. Billy was brought to court but got off with a stern warning because his mother’s deceased boyfriend was a known slug. Billy’s mom fell apart, kept having bad boyfriends, and eventually lost Billy to a foster home because she was an unfit mother. He was sent to the Speck House in the country which turned out not to be a bad place. Billy made some friends and no one abused him. When Billy was old enough, he joined the Marines and became a sniper. The Specks, who ran the foster home, supported his decision but they were sad to see him go.
Back to the present, Billy continues to enjoy doing things with his friends and neighbors. He does have a brief affair with Phyllis who works in his office building. He also goes to the state fair with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood. He makes a mistake when he gets a perfect score shooting a BB rifle at targets. After all, he was a world-class sniper in Iraq. People wonder why he’s so good at shooting.
It’s been about a week since the shooting and Billy thinks it’s time to move. He’s going to go to Las Vegas to track down Nick and Georgie to get the rest of his money, a cool $1.5 million. First, he’s going to visit Tripp and his roommates and punish them for what they did to Alice. By now Alice has figured out that Billy was the sniper and she’s decided to go with him when he heads out. He is adamantly against that at first but he comes around to letting her go with him.
But first, Alice’s rapists need to be punished, Billy wears a Melania Trump mask as he humiliates Tripp and his roomies. He messes them up – no permanent damage, but they may think twice before abusing a woman again.
Billy and Alice take off for Colorado which is where Bucky, Billy’s agent, has a vacation home. It's a long drive but it will be a safe place to stay on the way to Vegas. Billy and Alice are developing a relationship. It’s platonic but intense. He likes her exuberance, despite having been brutally gang raped. She is excited to see the Rocky Mountains. This is her first time away from the East Coast.
After Alice sees the Rockies, she and Billy discuss their lives. Alice was raised by her mother who wasn’t a great one. Alice was working in a coffee shop to go part-time to a mediocre college to get a business degree she really didn’t want. She was brutally gang-raped and left for dead and rescued by a career sniper who just killed a guy.
Billy doesn’t say much but Alice has read his book which lays out his life, most of which has been very unpleasant to say the least. He had no father and his mother had many issues which led to Billy’s being sent to a state home to be raised. Iraq was a nightmare as Billy did some good and bad things and saw some of his best friends over there brutally killed or maimed. Billy is talking to her about some tough times in Iraq when she starts to cry. Billy apologizes for upsetting her but she says that it wasn’t him who upset her. It was God. As she says, “It’s just that if there’s a God, He’s doing a piss poor job.” Then she points out the Rockies and says, “If there’s a God, he made those.” Billy thinks that the girl has a point.
They end up in Sidewinder, Colorado, at Bucky’s place, which is a rustic log cabin deep in the woods. Alice goes off to buy food while Bucky fills Billy in on his situation. The Las Vegas mob is after him for going off-script and not letting them kill him after the assassination.
Billy will stay with Bucky for a few days and then head for Vegas. He wants Alice to stay in Colorado for her safety. Bucky says that for Billy’s safety, Alice should go with him to Vegas. The mob guys won’t be expecting a couple.
Billy uses the time at Bucky's to write more about his Iraq experiences in his book. He saw some really bad things in Fallujah in what Billy refers to as the Funhouse, a snarky name since it was no fun. He lost some good friends there and he still hasn’t gotten over it.
Bucky has done some satellite surveillance of the fifteen-room house where Nick and his crew live in Vegas. He gives Billy detailed maps of the security system and tips on how to get in. He also tells Billy that Alice is falling in love with him, which is a problem because if Alice stays with Billy, she will be at risk of getting killed by his enemies.
After six days with Bucky, Billy buys an old Jeep Cherokee and he and Alice head west. When they get to Las Vegas, Alice wants to gamble in a casino. She does and she wins. They go to a movie that night and have a blast. They’re both being normal.
Tomorrow is the day Billy will confront Nick. That night they sleep separately although Alice suggests otherwise.
Bucky figured out that a certain Hispanic landscaping company regularly works on Nick’s property. Alice uses a chemical to darken Billy’s skin so that he will look like a Mexican landscaper for the company, the cover ID he’s going to use to get past Nick’s security. It works and Billy gets into Nick’s compound.
Nick and some of his thugs are watching a New York Giants football game when Billy shows up. Nick pretends to be delighted to see Billy. He’s not. Three of Nick’s goons try to take out Billy but he shoots them before they can hurt him. Nick is the only one left. Billy wants his pay so Nick goes to his safe to get the money in it, which isn’t all that Billy is owed for the hit but it’s something. Nick tells Billy that a big media mogul, Roger Klerke, was behind the hit.
Billy leaves Nick alive and steals a car from the garage to make his escape with Alice. Nick did tell Billy the truth and Billy believes that Nick really pushed back against killing Billy after the hit. Until now, the two of them did have a good history going back a number of years.
Billy tells Alice what was behind the hit. Roger Klerke had one son, Patrick, who was set to inherit the company when the senior Klerke retired in a year or two. Patrick presented a good front and had the support of the Klerke company’s board of directors. It turns out that Patrick was a drug addict who was in trouble with all sorts of underworld figures. Patrick also had incriminating video evidence about his father’s regularly having sex with thirteen- and fourteen-year old girls. This is a great father-son deal. Patrick had to die to save Roger’s bacon.
Klerke had to make sure that Patrick did not take over the company and expose his pedophilia, so Roger hired Joel to kill Patrick, which he did in what was disguised as a break-in. Joel was to stand trial for murdering Patrick. Joel would tell the court (and had evidence) that Roger Klerke hired him to kill Patrick Klerke. That would have made Roger guilty of murder so Joel had to die before going to trial and testifying.
Billy and Alice are heading back to Bucky’s to rest. Nick has somehow come through with $300,000 wired to Billy’s account. Billy is happy he didn’t kill Nick.
On the way to Bucky’s, Billy and Alice stop at a motel. She asks Billy if he wants to sleep with her. He does but he tells her that it’s not a good idea. They go to separate rooms and Billy has nightmares about Iraq.
They spend some time at Bucky’s. Billy writes more in his book, updating it with events and people from his recent activities. Billy gets in touch with Georgie Pigs, who is actually at a fat farm in South America. He’s lost 75 pounds in two months and is on his way to being healthy. Like Nick, Georgie pushed back against getting rid of Billy after the hit. There is honor among thieves/hoods.
Billy wants to take out Roger Klerke. Georgie hates Klerke so he gives Billy detailed information about where Roger lives and how to get in. Since Roger likes very young girls, Alice, who is 21, will pretend to be a 15-year old with Billy as her pimp. Georgie will use his contacts to set up the “date“ between Alice and Klerke. Georgie helps Billy - with his new pimp identity of Stephen Byrne - clear all of the hurdles to get into Roger Klerke’s house.
Bucky takes pictures that make Alice look very young and innocent. Klerke sees the shots and wants to meet the young thing, known as Rosalie now. Billy and Alice/Rosalie drive east to Montauk, Long Island, to meet with Roger Klerke. Along the way they have a lot of time to talk about a lot of things. They both really like writing. Alice says that she’s going to go back to college and become a writer. Billy has finished his book about his life. He is a writer.
Billy buys some gas that will knock out any people at Roger Klerke’s house. Billy doesn’t want to kill anyone he doesn’t have to. Billy and Alice/Rosalie get past security. Roger wants Alice/Rosalie to lift up her dress before he lets them in. She does. He is really sleazy.
Georgie told Billy that Roger has light security after you get past the outer gate. Billy sprays the guy guarding Klerke. The knockout gas works. Billy confronts Roger who is old and pathetic. Alice also confronts Klerke about his need to rape young children and she shoots him. Roger dies.
Billy and Alice escape, but a woman in another part of the house comes out with a gun and shoots Billy. He barely feels it as they head back to Bucky’s place in Colorado. It’s 2,000 miles. Alice insists on going to a hospital but Billy vetoes it. He says it’s just a graze. She patches him up as best she can and they start driving.
After the second day on the road, they stop at a motel in Iowa. Billy gets up in the middle of the night and writes a long letter to Alice. He is taking off by himself. He’ll hitch a ride at the nearby truck stop. He left her enough money to get to Bucky’s. Billy tells Alice that he is a bad man and that she needs to move on in life without him. Billy has left hundreds of thousands of dollars for her in several bank accounts in her name. He also sent Bucky a lot of money. Billy says that he may meet Alice again down the road, but for now they need to separate. Billy takes his laptop but leaves her a thumb drive with his book on it.
But wait … there’s more.
The letter to Alice was only recounted in his book. It didn't really happen. And Alice is the one who wrote that part in Billy’s book. She made it up.
What really happened was that Billy’s wound got worse. Alice wanted to call Bucky who might be able to figure out what to do to get medical help on the road, but Billy says no. Early on their journey, Alice buys some strong painkillers from a trucker. She also buys some uppers (drugs) to keep her awake since Billy can’t drive. They get to Gary, Indiana, and spend the night. The next day on the road Billy is sometimes delirious. They get to Nebraska and Billy tells Alice about the bank accounts he set up for her and about the money for Bucky.
Alice gets to Bucky’s. Billy died the last day on the road. Alice and Bucky bury him in the woods. Alice stays for a few days and sits near where he’s buried.
After a few days, Alice goes off to Fort Collins, Colorado, and enrolls in college there. She has plenty of money now, thanks to Billy. Bucky decides to retire from whatever it is he does. He has plenty of money now, also thanks to Billy.
Alice reflects about how the version of the story where Billy was only grazed by the bullet is the one she wanted to be true. In that reality, Billy went away on his own to heal, with the possibility of seeing Alice again down the road. That version wasn’t real, but the power of writing made it seem true to people who didn’t know what really happened. That is the power of writing, something Billy taught her. Alice will be a writer, just like Billy Summers.
Bob’s Take
You care about the characters. Billy and Alice obviously are key to the story, but even minor characters matter. Nick and Georgie have redeeming qualities. Bucky is the agent for a hired killer but he’s a good person who has lots of skills that help Billy and Alice get things done.
Billy is flawed. But, given his upbringing, it’s surprising that he wasn’t more messed up. He had no father in his life, and his mother, on good days, was a mess. Iraq was a cauldron that boiled over and overwhelmed him. He had serious PTSD which was obviously undiagnosed.
Good and evil are blurred.
• Billy is not a bad person but he has been forged by very bad events. Alice is a really nice person who lost her dad at a very early age. She still misses him and keeps his obituary in her wallet. Mom’s not a bad person but she basically ignored Alice, perhaps because of the trauma of losing her husband so early in the marriage.
• Roger and Patrick are the evil principals of the plot. Many of the supporting cast of mobsters are evil. They'll do anything for pay.
• Some of the bad guys aren’t all bad. Nick and Georgie come through to help Billy take care of business.
Redemption. Billy had a very rough life and he’s a loner. He’s never had any real friends outside of his combat colleagues in Iraq. But when he pretends to be a writer while he’s waiting to kill Joel, he makes lots of friends and forges solid relationships with a lot of people – adults and kids. In the week or so that he’s with Alice in the basement apartment, they develop a special relationship which grows stronger on the trip to Las Vegas. He redeems himself as a human being during the course of the book.
The political angle. Roger Klerke, the arch villain, is a Roger Ailes type, head of a right-wing TV network. (Ailes created and led Fox News for many years. He was fired after many women had established that he sexually harassed them.) Fox News travels in conspiracy theories and falsehood circles to boost ratings. It is convenient for the political narrative here that Roger Klerke was also a pedophile. Roger Ailes was a pig in terms of how he treated women, but his victims were not very young teenagers.
Vigilante justice is big. Billy goes it alone to punish Tripp’s crew, confront Nick and his minions, and take out Roger Klerke. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing by yourself.
Billy and Alice are complicated. Billy realizes that Alice may be a version of his sister, Cassie, that he feels that he failed by not stopping their mother’s boyfriend from killing her. Billy and Alice’s relationship is complex. They end up loving each other but it’s never quite realized in a lasting romantic sense.
Billy Summers is literary. The narrative reminds me of Richard Russo’s work, something you don’t expect from the master of the supernatural. King has always been a gifted writer in terms of moving things along and setting up lots of neat things. Billy Summers has a different style and tone than anything else I’ve read by King and I’ve read most of his work.
This is one of my favorite Stephen King books. I really enjoyed The Stand (about a post-plague world in the near future) and The Shining (pure horror in an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains), but they are classic terror/supernatural books. Billy Summers is more like two of King’s novellas, The Body, and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, both of which were published in King's 1982 collection, Different Seasons. The Body became the successful 1986 film, Stand by Me, and The Shawshank Redemption hit the screen in 1974. Those two works were more literary than King’s typical canon of work.
