SOURCE: "Scared but Safe," in The New York Times Book review, September 2, 1990, p. 21.

In the following review, Solomon asserts that while Four Past Midnight contains many of King's weaknesses as a fiction writer—including awkward prose—the collection is successful in providing readers with a way to escape the frightening aspects of modern life.

A decade ago, in Danse Macabre, Stephen King made his literary esthetic clear: "I try to terrorize the reader. But if. . . I cannot terrify . . . I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." The figures on his royalty checks suggest this strategy works, and he sticks to it closely in Four Past Midnight. Unlike Mr. King's adventurous novel The Eyes of the Dragon, this quartet of short novels risks few departures from earlier form.

By now, everyone knows Stephen King's flaws: tone-deaf narration...