I can't quite put my finger on it, but this book really creeped me out! Proving that you can't always get what you want (or, when you do, it will never be what it seems) this is Stephen King at his best -exploring the dark corners of the human psyche. Excellent stuff.

A new shop with a mysterious owner comes to a small town, in it is everything the customers desire. The prices are low and all the customers have to do is perform a prank on someone else in the town. Things start to escalate and soon the anger, jealousy and paranoia beneath the surface in Castle Rock comes out in full force. A classic Stephen King: scary and clever.

There’s a new shop in town. Sure ain’t much to look at from the outside, but whatever it is you’ve set your heart on, the kindly old shopkeeper will have it in stock. For 11 year old Brian Rusk, it’s a rare as rare can be baseball card. For his mum, a pair of sunglasses, once worn by Elvis himself. For Norris Widgwick, it’s a fishing rod, just like the one he and his dad used to use on the lake. And the beauty of it is, whatever it is you’ve set your heart on, the kindly old shopkeeper will sell it to you at a knock-down price. All he wants in return is that you play a harmless prank on one of your neighbours. Nothing mean. Just a prank. What could possibly go wrong? In ‘Needful Things’, Stephen King revisits his old chums in Castle Rock, Maine. It’s a town that pops up quite a lot in his work: The Body, The Dead Zone, The Dark Half, to name but three. Their titles alone might suggest that we’re a long way from Lake Wobegon. In those stories though, Castle Rock was merely the background. Here, he explores the place itself, with all its animosities, hatreds, prejudices and feuds, just waiting for someone to light the touch paper. It can hardly be called a flattering portrayal of American small town life, especially when we consider that the one item nobody asks for in Needful Things is a book. The scallywag who provokes this mayhem, Leland Gaunt, is one of King’s finest and most credible creations. A Stephen King baddie is nearly always some manifestation of unspeakable wickedness, behaving in an evil way because, well, that’s what manifestations of unspeakable wickedness do. ‘Simply the thing I am shall make me live’. Mr Gaunt, however, seems to have a degree of free-will. He does all this for the hell of it, to keep himself amused. Dante would have placed him in the Eighth Circle as a sower of discord. But you don’t have to look very far to find him, or one of his minions, in the real world.

Overall, I would say this was a good book. The main problem was that I could put it down, for days at a time and I prefer it when a book is unputdownable. There are too many characters to remember, with very similar names, making it very easy to lose track of who is who. The book lacks the cozy feeling that a small circle of central characters brings but it did paint a very eerie portrait of small towns. Although, not eerie enough to compete with It's Derry.