If Stephen King had not written it, we would never have read it

**Sundragon63** · December 19th, 2011

What's odd for me is I enjoyed this and didn't mind the ending at all, but the end of the Dark Tower series frustrated me (don't throw stuff at me!!). I hadn't thought about this till reading this thread, hmmm. Am thinking I'll re-read Dark Tower-everyone's so passionate about it and it's been yrs since I read it and now with new points of view to consider, I'm wondering how I'll feel about the ending this time around.

**Sundragon63** · December 19th, 2011

Prufrock21-my immediate reaction too!

**Frederick J. Parker** · January 3rd, 2012

I have always liked detective novels, from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett through Mickey Spillane and John D. Macdonald. It is such an "American" genre, and the fact that it is wrapped up in Noir makes it all the more interesting to me.

However, this is a genre that had been somewhat quiet for about thirty years, and the advent of Hard Case Crime as a publisher was well received by myself. I found their books very eye-catching with their '50s style graphics and their moody, hardboiled style of presentation. The addition of a SK novel was welcome, despite the fact that it felt to me that I had read it before, but didn't immediately realize where until I recalled the details of the "Taman Shud" case from Australia.

Another poster to this thread mentions that they thought Umney's Last Case was a better detective story, and to a point, I agree, even though, as I recall, I figured out the ending about half way through it.

**fredthe3rd** · 1 Week Ago

I quite enjoyed the book, but he should have left out the afterword where he makes tons of excuses and apologies for the ending.

Maybe he shouldn't even do afterwords - does a good book need an afterword? I usually leave reading the afterword until a day or two after finishing the book - it seems to detract from the ending a lot of the time.