Peter Straub’s Ghost Story by John A. A. Logan
When I was 14, in Scotland back in 1982, my two favourite novels were The Stand, by Stephen King, and Ghost Story, by Peter Straub. One summer night in 1982, in Inverness (small city in Scottish Highlands), I was introduced to a guy three years older than me, who it would have seemed I ought to have nothing in common with. We ended up being left alone together in a car, by the friend who had introduced us, and a heavy silence fell in the air, only to be broken when somehow the subject of reading came up, and we both found we had read The Stand, and Ghost Story. Neither of us had ever met anyone else who had read both those novels before. I knew very few people back then who read books at all. Thus began a friendship which lasted for the next 15 years or so… A couple of years later, in 1984, it so happened that Stephen King and Peter Straub teamed up, to co-write a novel, called The Talisman, which I loved. (“ WOLF!! Right here and Now!! ”) I loaned...