'Salem's Lot

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel.

Plot
The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot (or 'Salem's Lot for short) in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The idea of a writer returns to the town to discover that the residents are becoming vampires is interesting and original.
 * 2) Tons of scary moments, such as where Ben is looking at his old snow globe and seeing/imagining himself as a pale, bloodless, nearly brainless vampire, looking up at the real Ben from a window inside the house in the globe.
 * 3) Mark Petrie is one cool kid:
 * 4) *His introduction has him beating a notorious school bully at his own game, instantly destroying the fear he was holding all the kids in.
 * 5) *He resists Danny's attempt to hypnotize him and uses a cross from a model to fight him off.
 * 6) *Upon being tied up in the Marsten House, he keeps his cool and methodically works his way out of the ropes using tricks from a book he read about Harry Houdini.
 * 7) *Having just seen Barlow kill his parents with ease, he spits in the vampire's face and says "I'm going to kill you."
 * 8) The villain wins. Barlow is destroyed, but it's far too late for Jerusalem's Lot as the whole town has become overrun with vampires, and it's uncertain that Ben and Mark will be successful in eradicating them.
 * 9) *Indeed, the "One for the Road" story pretty much reveals that they weren't, and in fact the numbers keep increasing as the now-undead townspeople feed on any travelers who pass through the area.
 * 10) The book's major contribution to vampire pop culture is the image of child vampires floating outside your window asking to be let in.
 * 11) Danny Glick's funeral, with his father jumping into his grave onto his coffin, trying to get him to 'come out' and stop 'playing tricks' on him and his mother; ending with his despair that he "can't be dead. He's only twelve fucking years old".
 * 12) Earned a tv miniseries in 1979 and 2004 and movie in 2022.
 * 13) Kurt Barlow is awesome villain who is an ancient, insidious vampire. His ultimate goal is to turn Jerusalem's Lot into a nest for vampires by playing on the townspeople's desires and insecurities and offering them a chance to achieve what they want, which always ends in him turning them. After losing control of his thirst and killing a wounded Straker, blaming Mark for the incident, he turns Susan, driving Ben to seek her out and kill her, murders Mark's parents in front of him, and, after a standoff of faith with Father Callahan—which the priest lost—he forces him to drink some of his blood, barring him from holy ground for the rest of his life. One of his final acts in a last-ditch effort to stop Ben from staking him is to hypnotize Mark to kill him, all the while threatening to castrate Mark before turning him. And, even after his final demise, he still succeeded in his goal, sealing the fate of anyone who walks into the town of 'Salem's Lot.

Bad Quality

 * 1) The novel originally was slow-paced, until it stops when picks up once the vampire shenanigans start happening.