![]() ![]() At the top was a heavy wooden door with no window inside of a latched screen door. He put it under his arm and mounted the steps. He pushed down the bike’s kickstand with the toe of one Nike running-shoe and then picked the folded newspaper off the bottom step. He was still smiling, and his smile was open and expectant and beautiful. Todd brushed his blonde hair out of his eyes and walked the Schwinn up the cement path to the steps. The hedge was well-watered and well-clipped. It was white with green shutters and green trim. The house was a small bungalow set discreetly back on its lot. Now he brought his bike to a halt in front of 963 Claremont Street and stepped off it. If he’d done any better-straight A’s, for example-his friends might have begun to think he was weird. Straight A’s and B’s all the way up the line. Upshaw had scratched: Todd is an extremely apt pupil. Her favorite was his final fourth-grade card, on which Mrs. She had kept all of Todd’s old school report cards in a folder. His mom had majored in French in college and had met Todd’s father when he desperately needed a tutor. His dad was an architectural engineer who made forty thousand dollars a year. He looked like the sort of boy who might whistle while he worked, and he often did so. They were the kind that come with your name printed inside-JACK AND MARY BURKE, OR DON AND SALLY, OR THE MURCHISONS. He also looked like the kind of kid who might sell greeting cards for premiums, and he had done that, too. He looked like the kind of kid who might have a paper route, and as a matter of fact, he did-he delivered the Santo Donato Clarion. He was smiling a summer vacation smile as he pedaled through the sun and shade not too far from his own house. He looked like the total all-American kid as he pedaled his twenty-six-inch Schwinn with the apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban street, and that’s just what he was: Todd Bowden, thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow of adolescent acne. ![]() All in all, I would recommend reading it, but it’s nowhere near one of King’s better stories.Carl Alves - author of The Invocation Read more It’s also not believable that Todd can do all this while being a star athlete and valedictorian at his high school. Dussander is a feeble old man, and it’s not credible that he can overtake and kill all of these people. For one thing, they independently become serial killers preying on winos. ![]() The characters often don’t act in a believable manner. Besides being a psychopath, he is also annoying and whinny. Dussander and Todd dominate the book and neither of them are particularly likeable, although at least Dussander has a certain charm to him. There are elements of it that are compelling, and the writing is vintage King, so it’s top notch, but there are some serious issues with it.The first is characterization. It’s really a relationship of each person using the other for their own needs. Dussander and Todd don’t particularly like each other. ![]() Todd, as it turns out, is a complete and utter psychopath. It’s a story of an old Nazi concentration camp warden, Dussander, being blackmailed by a boy, Todd Bowden, into telling him all sorts of luring World War 2 concentration camp stories. The end result was a bit mixed.I liked the concept behind it. Given that Stephen King is my favorite writer and greatest influence upon me as a writer, I thought I would give it a read. While I remembered the premise, I didn’t really remember the details. My first exposure to Apt Pupil was the movie starting Ian McKellen. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. ![]()
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