Product Description

New York Times bestselling author Richard Bachman returns with an epic tale that's sure to keep you terrified until its soul shattering climax! It's a normal summer day on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio. Up until now it's been a nice place to live. The red van idling just up the hill is about to change all that. And as the darkest evil imaginable tears across this suburban street, the residents will find themselves trapped in a living nightmare, where anything 'no matter how terrible' is possible....

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88532 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From Amazon.com
An evil creature called Tak uses the imagination of an autistic boy to shift a residential street in small-town Ohio into a world so bizarre and brutal that only a child could think it up. It's as two-dimensional and gaudy as a kid's comic book, but for this reviewer, The Regulators is a gripping adventure tale about what happens when a mind fixated on TV (especially old Westerns and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200) runs amok. As Michael Collins writes in Necrofile, "[Stephen] King offers his readers a glimpse of the true evil of popular culture ... which has no design or intent, only an empty need to sustain itself. King is, I think, about the canniest observer of what America is, and that he generally writes horror ought to give us pause from time to time."

From Publishers Weekly
Why revive the Bachman byline more than a decade after Stephen King was found lurking behind it? Not for thematic reasons. This devilishly entertaining yarn of occult mayhem married to mordant social commentary is pure King and resembles little the four nonsupernatural (if science-fictional) pre-Thinner Bachmans. The theme is the horror of TV, played out through the terrors visited upon quiet Poplar Street in the postcard-perfect suburban town of Wentworth, Ohio, when a discorporeal psychic vampire settles inside an autistic boy obsessed with TV westerns and kiddie action shows and brings screen images to demented, lethal life. The long opening scene, in which characters and vehicles from the TV show Motokops 2200 (think Power Rangers) sweep down the street, spewing death by firearm, is a paragon of action-horror. The story rarely flags after that, evoking powerful tension and, at times, emotion. The premise owes a big unacknowledged debt to the classic Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"; echoes of earlier Kings resound often as well?the psychic boy (The Shining), a writer-hero (Misery, The Dark Half), etc. But King makes hay in this story in which anything can happen, and does, including the warping of space-time and the savage deaths of much of his large cast. The narrative itself warps fantastically, from prose set in classic typeface to handwritten journals to drawings to typewritten playscript and so on. So why the Bachman byline? Probably for fear that yet another new King in 1996 in addition to six volumes of The Green Mile and Viking's forthcoming Desperation might glut the market. Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is certain: call him Bachman or call him King, the bard of Bangor is going to hit the charts hard and vast with this white-knuckler knockout. Main selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild and Science Fiction Book Club.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Stephen King dusts off his nom de plume for this tale of the supernatural.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Definitive Bachman
I just read "The Regualtors" again, mostly looking for a "Dark Tower" connection and I had actually read a couple of "Bachman" books, "Thinner" and "The Long Walk", before I found out about his "involvement" with Stephen King. After "Thinner" I did not plan on reading anymore Bachman because he was too pessimistic. The protagonist usually ends up dead or worse, killing the people he cares for most. When I found out Bachman and King were one in the same, I ended up reading all of the stuff King put out under Bachman's name. But of course, I was always hit with that same downer feeling when reading a Bachman story. King's novels may be horrifying but at least the reader is often left with a sense of hope at the end, "Cujo" being the main exception. You feel, after reading a King novel, that, yes the hero or heroine went through hell, but they, or the world in general, are better for the suffering they endured. It makes it a pleasure to re-read King's novels. When "The Regulators" & "Desperation" came out I was excited to read both, but I was a little worried about "The Regulators" with the Bachman name attached. I won't give anything away involving the story, which is gripping and will keep you turning pages, but it is a Bachman story. It does not end on such a sour note like "Thinner", but it will give you a feeling of futility after reading it.
As another reviewer stated, I too found that there were too many characters without enough development. Only one or two became "real", but the rest seemed like so much Regulator gunfire fodder. All in all, "The Regulators" is neat, in that it is a companion piece for "Desperation", and it is a quick read. I finished it in about 7 hours. I would recommend getting one of the used copies listed above for under $.50, I wouldn't pay the $5 price tag for a book you most likely will only read once.

Decent, but for completists only
Without question, this one doesn't begin to stack up against Desperation. Some new elements fall into place, but nothing too exciting.

Dreadful Schlock
This novel gets 2 stars instead of 1 out of me only because I thought the beginning pages displayed a certain satisfying suspense, a feeling of impending dread, and I liked the way King captured the atmosphere of suburban American. It doesn't take long for the book to deteriorate though, and it gets bad. I mean, really, REALLY bad. I just came back to reading King after being away from him for a long time, and if "The Regulators" is any indication of the stuff he's churning out now, I think I'll go back to staying away.

You might be interested in checking out the sister book to this, "Desperation." It's better by far, but it's still a much flabbier, more undisciplined book than I remember King producing in the past.