The black house (novel)

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The Black House is the sequel to the novel The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub, which was published in 2001 (although it should be noted that knowledge of The Talisman for The Black House is not required).

Since the two friends enjoyed working together at the time, they decided to write a continuation of the story. This was published in the USA in 2001 before it went on sale in Germany a year later. According to an interview with King and Straub, a third part of the talisman is sought. The novel has a special narrative structure.

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Strange events take place in the apparently paradisiacal city of French Landing in the US state of Wisconsin: a terrible serial killer nicknamed "Fisherman" roams the streets. He cruelly kidnaps and kills young children, mutilates them and eats their meat. The sheriff desperately seeks help from Jack Sawyer, a retired Los Angeles police officer who found a serial killer in a neighboring town some time ago.

It is the fisherman who suddenly pulls Jack into the case: he sends him a children's shoe with the corresponding foot in it. Jack soon realizes that the killer is only a tool for the powers of that other world (region) where he touched the talisman as a boy twenty years ago. Jack soon commutes back and forth between French Landing and the region, with his friend Speedy Parker, whom he hadn't thought of for 20 years, by his side, as well as a blind disc jockey, the beautiful mother of one of the missing children and a gang of motorcyclists with the name "Thunder Five". He pursues the fisherman and a much larger fish: the "Abbalah", the scarlet king who wants to destroy the axis of the world. And the way to his realm leads through the "black house", which stands empty and abandoned, hidden in the dense forest of French Landing. This house is the only way Jack Sawyer can go into the otherworldly world to end the series of murders. After twenty years he returns to the land of the talisman.

useful information

  • The term "Fisherman" refers to the real serial killer Albert Fish .
  • The novel is set in another parallel world to the one from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series
  • In general, there are many connections to The Dark Tower cycle, so the protagonist of the cycle is also mentioned at some points in the novel.

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