Big Driver by Stephen King is the kind of heart-pounding, adrenalin-filled horror story that will stay with you for a long time after listening. The reading by Jessica Hecht is excellent and the horrifying scenes drawn by the author are extremely vivid.
I requested Big Driver for review, not realizing that it was a story from Full Dark, No Stars, a collection of five stories by Stephen King that I had already listened to.
But this is one of the best stories from Full Dark, No Stars, and is definitely worth the $9.99 price, if you haven’t already bought Full Dark, No Stars, that is. Big Driver has already been made into a TV movie already, so you may have already encountered spoilers, but I’m not going to discuss the plot here more than to say the story is about an author of cozy crime fiction who makes a routine visit to a Massachusetts library to give a talk. (In lieu of a trigger warning, I’ll just say if there are certain types of violence that you can’t bear to read about, you should look up other reviews to find out more before choosing to read Big Driver.)
BTW, have others noticed how a lot of e-books and e-audiobooks are being re-released separately this way? A little bit misleading! I also recently bought the e-book edition of what I thought was the story collection 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, at what I thought was a fantastically low price, but it was only the title story, 20th Century Ghost (no s), I realized just after the final click.
Recommended for listeners who like ’em scary!
Big Driver
King, Stephen
Hecht, Jessica, narr.
SImon and Schuster Audio
October 2014
9781442383746
4 hrs, 20 min
$9.99, audio download
Disclosure: I received a free audio download from the publisher for review.
Other opinions on the audio edition of Big Driver from book bloggers who posted their reviews in a more timely fashion:
Book Chatter
Book Journey
Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Eargasms
I read this, too, in FULL DARK, NO STARS, but as a hardcover book, not audio or e.
This is Stephen King at his best. By that I mean no horror, no supernatural, which is kidstuff, which I’ve outgrown.
I think it’s safe to say that the writer of cozy mysteries becomes a crime victim (an understatement, I know) and then becomes an avenger.
By the way, it isn’t just e- and audiobooks that are novellas originally part of another book. These are coming out in hardcopy as well.
I thought the audio was pretty great. The TV movie stuck close to the story line for the most part. As far as King’s stories go, this one was pretty scary. I am used to the woo woo stuff he typically does but he doesn’t often delve into real horror like rape. Not too often.
I’m over-vigilant about spoilers, probably! I try to go into most books knowing almost nothing about them ahead of time! I don’t mind supernatural/paranormal elements in horror, but it’s got to be easier to sustain the feeling of horror in a short story or novella than a full-length novel, so that’s I like horror short story collections.
I’m less likely to watch a horror movie than to read a book! And when I do, I like the campy ones like Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead best!