"I can do this," I told myself. I can end the year with a book by Stephen King. Believe it or not, I've never read a single book by the King of Horror Fiction (I wonder what Stephen King thinks of that title), although I've seen at least two Stephen King movies, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. Horror fiction is not my usual reading choice--not by a long shot--but we'd been given the thick paperback Duma Key as a Christmas gift and I picked it up, read a few pages, and thought, "I can do this". I could always stop reading it if I didn't care to finish it, as I do with other books which fail to engage me. But it did engage me--and quickly. Stephen King is a good storyteller, a master. His friendly, familiar style drew me in, mi amigo; his informal tone seems to balance the menacing events, liberal use of profanity, and gore of his books, muchacho. He's also quite funny, and characters exhibit a droll sense of humor at times. Edgar, the protagonist of Duma Key, who's lost an arm in a horrific accident, makes jokes about his missing arm such as, "I was going to say I'd cut my own arm off first, but all at once that seemed like a really bad idea."