**
The father of a third-grader with extraordinary pyrokinetic ability (her parents were once subjects in a government-sponsored psionics experiment) does what he can to protect her from agents who want to turn her into a laboratory rat. Reasonably effective horror thriller has King's typical everyman appeal and all the author's usual stylistic curlicues, but fails to provide a worthwhile adversary. Here, the bad guy is The Shop, a CIA-like agency that King paints as totally evil, and which is most often represented by the ridiculous caricature of an American Indian who starts out as a hitman and ends up essentially running the agency -- simply because everyone else is afraid of him. Worse still is his motivation, which manages to be both incomprehensible and silly. Made into a movie in 1984, starring David Keith and Drew Barrymore.
The father of a third-grader with extraordinary pyrokinetic ability (her parents were once subjects in a government-sponsored psionics experiment) does what he can to protect her from agents who want to turn her into a laboratory rat. Reasonably effective horror thriller has King's typical everyman appeal and all the author's usual stylistic curlicues, but fails to provide a worthwhile adversary. Here, the bad guy is The Shop, a CIA-like agency that King paints as totally evil, and which is most often represented by the ridiculous caricature of an American Indian who starts out as a hitman and ends up essentially running the agency -- simply because everyone else is afraid of him. Worse still is his motivation, which manages to be both incomprehensible and silly. Made into a movie in 1984, starring David Keith and Drew Barrymore.
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