SOURCE: A review of Skeleton Crew, in Book World—The Washington Post, June 16, 1985, pp. 1, 13.

Nicholls is an Australian critic. In the following review of Skeleton Crew, he lauds King's use of colloquial images and dialect, while asserting that occasionally King's use of vulgar language or imagery is detrimental to his narratives' effectiveness as well as his characters' appeal.

Stephen King could no doubt make a megabuck deal for a paraphrase of the telephone directory, so a simple short-story collection (his third) may seem unsurprising. When you think about it though, it reveals a commendable absence of greed. Even for Stephen King (and especially for anybody else) short stories are not great money spinners. If he writes them, it must be because he enjoys writing them.

Skeleton Crew makes it obvious that King is not worried now, if he ever was, about his pulp-magazine past. There are stories here...