Poplar Street, Wentworth, Ohio - a friendly suburb in middle-America, busy with the sounds of children playing and grown-ups enjoying suburban life. Things can change so quickly, though...

Something evil is lurking behind the door of one of these non-descript middle-class homes, a something with a taste for children's television, and a mean streak as wide as Ohio itself. The cheerful residents of Poplar street are blissfully unaware of the growing force in their street until what appears to be a random drive-by shooting starts a terrifying sequence of surreal events.

How many of the locals will still be standing at the end of this, and can everyone be saved, once again, by the determination of a special little boy?

My Thoughts

As I mentioned in my review of Desperation by Stephen King, this novel is one side of a gimmick - The Regulators was released at the same time as the other book, and the two are a very closely matched pair. Similar events take place in front of two backgrounds that could not be more dissimilar - even the names of most of the characters are the same, although they have been strangely mixed up, except for one, who quickly becomes the hero of the story.

The Regulators follows the same style as Desperation, being a meeting of several of Stephen King's styles. The gross-out horror of his Christine/Carrie days is even more evident, but the largest proportion of the book is, again, more in the style of The Stand, It or The Langoliers - a force beyond human comprehension is encountered, and must be defeated, lest the human race be destroyed.

It is also possible to read into this novel a wry dig at TV, in particular children's TV, and some of the scary cartoons that are aimed at kids today! Looking at the plot as a whole, it appears to play on the question 'What would happen if a child's imagination could shape the world?', and the answer to the question, at least in Richard Bachman's analysis, is not a pleasant one.