Product Description

There's a place in Wentworth, Ohio, where summer is in full swing. It's called Poplar Street. Up until now it's been a nice place to live.The idling red van around the corner is about to change all that. Let the battle against evil begin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25154 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Released on: 2002-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.com Review
An evil creature called Tak uses the imagination of an autistic boy to shift a residential street in small-town Ohio into a world so bizarre and brutal that only a child could think it up. It's as two-dimensional and gaudy as a kid's comic book, but for this reviewer, The Regulators is a gripping adventure tale about what happens when a mind fixated on TV (especially old Westerns and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200) runs amok. As Michael Collins writes in Necrofile, "[Stephen] King offers his readers a glimpse of the true evil of popular culture ... which has no design or intent, only an empty need to sustain itself. King is, I think, about the canniest observer of what America is, and that he generally writes horror ought to give us pause from time to time."

From Publishers Weekly
Why revive the Bachman byline more than a decade after Stephen King was found lurking behind it? Not for thematic reasons. This devilishly entertaining yarn of occult mayhem married to mordant social commentary is pure King and resembles little the four nonsupernatural (if science-fictional) pre-Thinner Bachmans. The theme is the horror of TV, played out through the terrors visited upon quiet Poplar Street in the postcard-perfect suburban town of Wentworth, Ohio, when a discorporeal psychic vampire settles inside an autistic boy obsessed with TV westerns and kiddie action shows and brings screen images to demented, lethal life. The long opening scene, in which characters and vehicles from the TV show Motokops 2200 (think Power Rangers) sweep down the street, spewing death by firearm, is a paragon of action-horror. The story rarely flags after that, evoking powerful tension and, at times, emotion. The premise owes a big unacknowledged debt to the classic Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"; echoes of earlier Kings resound often as well?the psychic boy (The Shining), a writer-hero (Misery, The Dark Half), etc. But King makes hay in this story in which anything can happen, and does, including the warping of space-time and the savage deaths of much of his large cast. The narrative itself warps fantastically, from prose set in classic typeface to handwritten journals to drawings to typewritten playscript and so on. So why the Bachman byline? Probably for fear that yet another new King in 1996 in addition to six volumes of The Green Mile and Viking's forthcoming Desperation might glut the market. Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is certain: call him Bachman or call him King, the bard of Bangor is going to hit the charts hard and vast with this white-knuckler knockout. Main selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild and Science Fiction Book Club.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Stephen King dusts off his nom de plume for this tale of the supernatural.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Regulators
A good book, but Desperation was better. I read Desperation first, and expected it to be similar, but the two books are completely different. The force of evil in both novels is the same, and the characters have the same names but different personalities, and different people survive at the end. The ending is also different, Desperation's is far better. The story involves an autistic boy named Seth who seems to have some special powers. Soon, it becomes apparent that he is infested by a being/power called Tak, which feeds on peoples' "life-force". Tak is using its limited but growing powers to turn a pleasant summer afternoon in this pleasant Ohio suburb into a living nightmare for all its residents. I think the biggest problem with this book is the characters. There are so many of them that it becomes confusing, and that the author doesn't spend much time on character development for any of them. As a result, we really don't get to "know" any of them (except maybe one), which for me is one of the things that makes a Stephen King (but apparently not Bachman) novel good. Still, it's a very amusing (and gory) story. The ending, while not quite the "epic" finish of Desperation, is still good.

Vintage Stephen King? I think not!
I read more than 75 novels each year and have read most of King's stuff. Obviously, with so much output from one writer, there are bound to be hits and misses. This one was a miss, in my opinion but there is still enough here to make it worth the read.

I had already read Desperation, the companion book to this volume, and came away with the feeling that I had just experienced a pretty good King novel. It also was far from his best but I enjoyed it none-the-less. So, naturally, I turned to this book, The Regulators, hoping for a similar experience. Stephen King is well known for marketing gimicry, pushing the envelope in the publishing business. At first it was through using brand names without permission. Then it was the alternate ego, Richard Bachman, followed by the serial novel (Green Mile) and now it is a "dual novel." Frankly, I don't think it worked this time. I just couldn't get the parallel between the two books/settings. Same names but different people and places. What was the point? Really, they are two seperate books.

In this novel, King definitely displays his famous talent for scene setting. The opening chapter is one of the best I've read, setting the stage for the coming horror. The plot was also pretty good, although the evil 'Tak' seemed somewhat ordinary. King uses a great mechanism to deliver the horror this time. The manifestation of the mind of a small autistic boy. The horrors come in the form of all of those things that frighten young children and, consequently, frighten us. The text is sprinkled throughout with other tidbits as well that help to tell the story: letters, postcards, diary entries, even a script. Another King tool to attack from all directions.

But somehow, it didn't all flow well together. There were so many characters that I lost track of who was who and as they started to die off, I found myself not caring too much who was left. Perhaps I was a victim of having read Desperation first. I guess I was expecting the same characters to survive.

Overall, a middle-of the road King entry. King purists will want to read this one but King samplers should pass.

Who knew that earth demons like Chef Boyardee?
'The Regulators' is not quite on the literary level of 'Desperation,' but that makes it more fun in a way, especially as it's less preachy. I liked that 'The Regulators' adds a little more information about the mysterious Tak. Here we see a more terribly playful, oddly fastidious, and possibly younger Tak who loves spaghetti, chocolate milk, westerns, and Cassie Stiles. And while most of the characters of 'The Regulators' are flatter than those of 'Desperation,' 'The Regulators' gives us a glimpse of what some inhabitants of Desperation might have been like before Tak possessed them, particularly Audrey and Collie who were never shown "pre-Tak" in 'Desperation.'