The Regulators by Stephen King (1996, Hardcover)

Synopsis
The Regulators by Stephen King is a mystery novel penned under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. This supernatural horror novel is about a town in Ohio where, on a pleasant summer afternoon, many of the people who live on Poplar Street die when five mysterious vans go on a drive-by shooting spree. Before nightfall, the surviving residents of Poplar Street find themselves in a classic supernatural horror novel world, where anything can happen, no matter how unexpected. The bloodbath in The Regulators by Stephen King happens because a supernatural creature called Tak uses the imagination of an autistic boy to transport into a bizarre and brutal world. This book by Richard Bachman is a cautionary tale about what happens when a young mind obsessed with old Westerns and violent shootout games runs amok. The central character in The Regulators by Stephen King is Seth Garon, a boy with supernatural powers that he is just beginning to discover.

Key Details
Author:	Stephen King
Language:	English
Publisher:	E.P. Dutton
Format:	Hardcover
ISBN-10:	0525941908
ISBN-13:	9780525941903

Size
Length:	466 pages
Thickness:	1.5 in
Weight:	29.6 oz

Publisher's Note
On a perfect summer afternoon in Wentworth, Ohio, many of the citizens who live on Poplar Street are killed mysteriously, and at the center of the mystery is a young boy named Seth Garon whose supernatural powers are just awakening

Industry Reviews
"'The Regulators' is less akin to the other Bachman books than to King's 'The Mist' and 'The Langoliers'. All three feature a handful of more-or-less ordinary Americans who find themselves inexplicably isolated from the rest of the world and besieged by supernatural forces of unknown origin. And, as in those earlier novellas, the fantasy elements in Bachman's novel strongly evoke 'The Twilight Zone', an acknowledged influence on King's pop-culture inspired fiction."
Washington Post Book World (09/22/1996)

"Those who have read the cynical but exciting Bachman books (e.g., 'Thinner', 1985) know that King's stories take on a misanthropic edge when he dons his nom de plume, and 'The Regulators' is no different....Bachman gleefully kills off his most sympathetic characters in a plot that's reminiscent of an old Western crossed with a Saturday-morning cartoon. Although the action is fierce and Bachman's imagination proves boundless, the hopelessness of his characters' predicament makes it a bleak and tiresome reading experience." Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Library Journal (07/01/1996)