The Nine Books that inspired me to write (1 of 9) #1 Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Salem's Lot - (1975)

Salem's Lot is the first book on my list of the 9 books that inspired me to write. This was my first 'grown up' book, a battered trade paperback found in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin's long-gone 'Daffodil Market', I paid £0.60p for it in 1983. The premise like JAWS, parks an unspeakable threat into a small American town and its corrosive impact on the locals. Salem's Lot was a gateway book for me to the works of John Steinbeck, Elmore Leonard and Jack Kerouac.

King once stated he saw the book as 'Peyton Place meets Dracula', a daytime soap opera steeped in horror, and he hits the mark with pin point characterisation, building characters like Thornton Wilder into believable people living in small town America, almost a Springsteen canvas of Americana.

I still think its his best novel, (possibly only bettered by 11.22.63). Ben Mears, a writer coming to terms with a childhood trauma, returns to Salem's Lot at the same time as the mysterious Straker and Barlow arrive.  The plot explores the theme of do bad things or bad places draw bad people to them?

When I read the book I was in my Grandmother's home on Aughavana Road, Dublin. From the front bedroom window, across the Jewish Graveyard, the Dublin mountains were visible and on a clear night, the Hell Fire Club stood prominently. I dreamt Danny Glick was scratching at my window, a recurring nightmare for many years after.

King also masters pace in this book, the hunt through the L-shaped basement for Barlow's coffin is nerve shredding and forces you to turn the page. But like Elmore Leonard, the villians aren't completely black and white. King shades Straker with animal attraction, Ann Norton observes his shaved head as 'attractive' - with lethal results for her.

King's premise inspired me in writing my second novel ZINNMAN, where a chemical weapon created by the Nazis at the height of the Third Reich is the unspoken threat hovering in the background.

Salem's Lot is a masterclass on many levels, perfectly pitched, written and realised and even thirty-seven or so years later is a great read