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Night Shift by: Stephen King

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Rating: - Perhaps some of King's best short stories?

This was the first short story collection of King's I purchased, and it remains to this day my favourite. The stories are all varied in size, genre and strength. Some are scary enough to make that shadow seen on your wall during the night seem just that little bit scarier and threatening. While some of the stories are weaker, they are more than outweighed by the strong. My personal favourites were 'Graveyard Shift' and 'I Am The Doorway'. 'Graveyard Shift' is about the ongoing friction between a man and his boss, resulting in a haunting conclusion involving super-sized rats. 'I Am The Doorway' tells the story of a former astronaut, who has been infected by an alien presence. He is forced to commit terrible murders, until he finally takes matters into his own hands. I would recommend this to any King fans, or those just starting to familiarise themselves with his work.

Rating: - A strange mix of sheer brilliance and trite immaturity

For fans of short stories, this collection by Stephen King will probably delight. The stories are well written and the ideas ahead of their time in some cases. However, some of these tales are a little lacking in any real inspiration (Graveyard Shift, Grey Matter, The Man Who Loved Flowers) and at times I felt like I was reading stories written by a teenager rather than the brilliant mind that produced works such as The Stand, The Shining and The Tommyknockers, to mention but a few.

Jerusalem's lot, Quitters and Battleground, for me, stand as the best stories in the book showing the style and finesse lovers of Stephen King are familiar with. If you have everything else by Stephen King, go out and buy it. If not, save it for another time and try Cell, Pet Sematary or if you prefer shorter stories, Different Seasons.

Rating: - Some Chilly; Some Silly...

I was inspired to buy Night Shift (as well as Stephen King's other short story collections) after reading a couple of stories from a copy of Nightmares and Dreamscapes which my girlfriend owns. I enjoyed them so much that I had to sample more of King's short fiction.

There is some very good work here. The out-and-out horror stories are generally excellent. I don't particularly enjoy more literary work (it's genre fiction or nothing for me) so the slower, more "lifelike" ones didn't do a lot for me, but without doubt when King delves into the world of the macabre, I was hooked.

The biggest complaint is that some of the concepts in this collection are extraordinarily silly. Perhaps the biggest example of this is "Trucks", where lorries take up a mind of their own and besiege a bunch of people in a petrol station until they agree to fill them up. King recurs the theme of everyday objects as a focus of horror in "Battleground", where toy soldiers declare war on an unfortunate man, although I feel that this story was meant to be more humorous. The concept of inanimate objects coming to life does work fairly well, though, in "The Mangler", where a demon-possessed laundry press machine kills people. It sounds just as ridiculous as the others, but with neat execution King actually manages to pull it off.

Another good horror story is "The Boogeyman". This one surprised me because the events recounted in it are not related to us through the usual prosaic narrative. Instead, we follow the story entirely through dialogue, as a man tells his tale to a psychiatrist. One would think that this second-hand manner of storytelling would make for a highly impersonal reading experience, but it is actually probably the most frightening story in the book. It left a lasting impression on me: After reading it I went into a room with the lights off and had a sudden urge to leg it before something grabbed me!

The other highlight is "Children of the Corn", one of King's most famous short stories. A couple drive into a deserted Nebraska town where they come into contact with religiously fanatical children who have a special interest in sacrificing people (including each other) to a creature called He Who Walks Behind The Rows. Chilling stuff.

Overall, a great collection of stories and there were several other good ones that I haven't mentioned in this review. While I was only interested in the pure horror stories, King does show that he can write "proper" literature, too, and so this book should have a little of something for everyone.

Rating: - King at his very best

In my ongoing love-hate relationship with Stephen King, the short stories seem to universally come out on the side of love. They're frequently much more experimental than the novels, featuring ideas that in a full-length work would just be too outlandish, but in a short story, burn very bright indeed.

This collection begins with Jerusalem's Lot, a prequel to "'Salem's Lot" the novel. The short story is possibly even better than the book, a pure gothic classic, which explains the beginnings of the evil in the Lot. Less good was Night Surf a rather feeble and extremely bleak addendum to The Stand. King obsessives need to own this for these two stories alone.

The best stories here are the ones which mix humour into their horror. The Boogeyman is the tale of a man whose three children have all been taken by the monster in the closet. The thing that made this story for me was that the protagonist was so very unpleasant, I quite felt for the poor boogeyman having to deal with him, but the ending is genuinely chilling; I read it out loud to my little brother, and he came out in goosebumps.

In The Mangler, the ingredients for an ancient spell to summon demons are accidentally mixed inside a laundry machine, which then develops murderous tendencies. Sounds ridiculous, and it is, but it also has a deep sense of the dark.

Not all the stories here are supernatural. Both The Ledge and Last Ring on the Ladder concern very different forms of purely human nastiness, as does Quitters Inc., a return to the perennial King favourite topic of giving up smoking.

The collection also includes the famous stories Children of the Corn and The Lawnmower Man, both of which are great but seem to lack a little of the sparkle found elsewhere in the book. Recommended for King fans and newbies alike.

Rating: - Kings best short stories

Night Shift is Stephen King's first collection of short stories, and features 20 tales. Not every story is perfect, but all in all Night Shift is a fantastic anthology stuffed with great ideas. Stephen King has subsequently published 3 more short story collections (Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual) but Night Shift remains the best of the bunch.

While no date is given, collection opener 'Jerusalem's Lot' certainly reads as though it is the earliest of King's stories presented here, as the authors' voice is all but buried beneath those of his influences. Readers of 'Salem's Lot may be expecting a vampire-filled sequel to that novel, but this is in fact an unrelated Lovecraftian tale of a mans disturbing family inheritance. There are some nicely macabre moments, but the elements of the story are so familiar - presenting the tale as diary extracts; an inherited spooky old home; mysterious sounds in the walls and basement; superstitious locals; Cthulhu Mythos references - that they are virtually horror fiction clichés, making this a very average start to the collection.

'Graveyard Shift' is better, and though a story about clearing rats out of a basement doesn't sound particularly enthralling, the power play between drifter Hall and his obnoxious boss Warwick pushes the stakes to a higher, if rather unbelievable, level.

Next up is 'Night Surf', a powerful vignette detailing a handful of amoral survivors of an apocalyptic disease. Short but full of startling imagery.

Another science fiction style horror story comes with 'I Am The Doorway', where an astronaut is taken over by an alien infection picked up while orbiting Venus. Very melodramatic, and with a Cronenberg body horror feel, King's way of making everyday object appear strange by looking at them through alien eyes is suitably disorientating.

Stephen King has tackled many cornball subject in his time - and amazingly has made them work more often than not - but the idea of a possessed laundry press roaming the streets in 'The Mangler' may very well be the most ridiculous concept he's ever touched, and despite a few nice macabre moments, the overriding silliness of this story proves impossible to escape.

By contrast 'The Boogeyman' is one of King's most effective shorts, drawing on the common childhood fear of 'something' hiding in the bedroom closet to produce a very chilling tale.

Another strong tale is 'Grey Matter', when a batch of bad beer has dire consequences for a boy's father.

In 'Battleground' a professional hitman finds himself under attack by toy soldiers after killing a toy manufacturer. A great OTT idea, with an amusing punchline.

There's more inanimate objects coming to life in 'Trucks', when vehicles start driving themselves and trap a group of drivers at a truck stop. It's a great concept, though this is more of a situation than a story with a beginning, middle and end.

In 'Sometimes They Come Back' a schoolteacher is haunted by the killers of his long-dead brother. A more traditional ghost story after the last few bizarre tales, but no less effective for all that.

'Strawberry Spring' deals with a serial killer on a college campus. Despite the lack of any supernatural content there is a distinctly otherworldly feel to this evocative fog-bound piece, and n terms of prose this is the most accomplished story in the collection thus far.

King enters straight thriller territory with 'The Ledge', where a man who's crossed a gangster takes up a life or death bet that he can walk round the outside of a high-rise apartment on a 5-inch wide ledge. A simple but brilliant idea, with a nice twist in the tail.

A man gets more than he bargained for when he hires someone to cut his lawn in 'The Lawnmower Man'. Bearing no relation to the film of the same name, this is a short and bizarre piece, filled with some fantastically insane imagery.

'Quitters, Inc' features another great concept, with a company offering a unique method of curing cigarette addiction. The concept and punishments for breaking the treatment are so rich in potential drama that it's almost a shame this story isn't twice as long, but this is still a fantastic punchy read with a nice twist ending.

'I Know What You Need' tells the story of a nerd with the magical power to give people whatever they need, and his attempts to win over a girl. A decent enough story, but rather overshadowed by the more outlandish concepts elsewhere in the book: this is well done but forgettable in comparison.

Perhaps the most famous of all the stories in the collection, 'Children Of The Corn' finds two travellers stranded in a town where homicidal children intend to sacrifice them to He Who Walks Behind The Rows. A fantastically dark tale of religious mania, this plays on the urbanites fear of isolated rural communities, and does for small-town America what The Wicker Man did to the Scottish Islands.

'The Last Rung on the Ladder' is the first tale that doesn't fit into the horror / weird fiction genre, being a melancholy and quite beautiful tale of a girl's brush with death as a child and her relationship with her older brother. A nice change of pace.

'The Man Who Loved Flowers' is one of the least impressive stories in the collection, being a very short piece dependant solely on it's twist ending for effect. Pleasantly written, but the story lacks any original ideas.

Next up is 'One For The Road', a tale of a mans attempt to save his wife and daughter after they are stranded in a snowstorm. Opening tale Jerusalem's Lot ironically had no connection to King's 'Salem's Lot, but this is a straight sequel set a couple of years down the line.

Finally 'The Woman in the Room' is another non-genre piece, a very bleak tale of a woman suffering from terminal cancer, and her sons doubt over whether or not to administer a mercy killing.

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