Almost any writer across any medium with any designs on longevity will have a handful of tried and trusted tropes they bust out on a regular basis, and as one of the most famous scribes of the modern era, it’s no surprise that Stephen King is among them.
Whether it’s almost everything being set in and around Maine, youthful protagonists, re-naming standard unexplainable phenomena with bespoke branding like “the Shining” and “Tommyknockers,” or any of the other standard trappings we’ve come to expect over the decades, it isn’t hard to take a guess at the broad strokes of any King tale and get at least one thing right.
With that in mind, it seems a little hypocritical for the maestro of the macabre to so brazenly take an entire subgenre to task over one of its most familiar and overplayed elements, although we do have to resign ourselves to the fact he’s 100 percent right.
The quaint British countryside mystery has been a staple of localized storytelling for as long as anyone can remember, and it’s definitely worth noting that an alarming number of dead bodies are indeed discovered by people walking their canine companions through the leafy undergrowth.
That being said, it’s not as if King is immune for repeatedly leaning into the same story and character beats over and over again, but given the sheer volume of literary works he’s pumped out during such a lengthy, distinguished, and illustrious career, he’ll be more cognizant of that fact than just about anyone.
