[The] arrival of a new Stephen King novel is something of an event: a minor event, perhaps, but still an event. And even when that novel is less than totally satisfying, as is the case with The Dead Zone, it is only slightly less.

King, who explored psychokinesis in Carrie, vampirism in Salem's Lot, mediumship and places of evil in The Shining, applies his considerable writing skills to psychometry (not the science, but the paranormal phenomena) in The Dead Zone. His hero, John Smith—a name choice more playful than profound—awakes from a 4 1/2-year coma with the ability to fully "know" people's present and future circumstances just by touching them or an object they have touched. This skill, in the hands—literally—of good, decent and affable Smith, becomes progressively more curse than blessing, and leads to a final confrontation with a corrupt and dangerous politician whose...