Two quick years after concluding his Bill Hodges trilogy of mystery novels with End of Watch (2016), King returns to the genre (and even brings back a character) with a book that showcases his best and worst instincts. The first half, a police procedural, is absolutely riveting. Oklahoma detective Ralph Anderson relishes arresting local little-league coach Terry Maitland for the brutal murder of an 11-year-old boy. Multiple witnesses saw him, his DNA is all over the scene it's open and shut. But is it? King makes you feel Ralph's drowning panic as evidence, just as irrefutable, places Terry in another town. The impossibility of the mystery is intoxicating, and readers will get dizzy from their shifting sympathies. And then . . . well, King loyalists will see this coming. Seemingly written into a corner, the story goes supernatural, with a Salem's Lot-style gang of reluctant heroes taking up arms against a foe who has something to do with a Mexican monster legend and women-wrestler films. Still, the amazingly strong start should be enough to fuel most readers through the end.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Along with Revival (2014), Mr. Mercedes (2014), and Full Dark, No Stars (2010), this is another shockingly dark book perfect for longtime fans, of whom there are, well, zillions.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2018 Booklist

Reader Patton's steady, realistic narration adds a strong element of credibility to King's supernatural police procedural, in which a small-town detective is faced with an apparently impossible crime. The worst day in the life of Flint City, Okla., detective Ralph Anderson is when he arrests popular Little League baseball coach Terry Maitland for the murder of a young boy. The coach's fingerprints and DNA are all over the crime scene, but he has an ironclad alibi: he was at a convention in another city and has witnesses and even video footage to prove it. Subsequent events suggest the presence of an otherworldly serial killer whom Anderson and his associates set out to find and destroy. Joining them is Holly Gibney, a fascinating character from the author's Bill Hodges crime trilogy. Brilliantly deductive, neurotic, and obsessively determined, she quickly takes over the novel, and Patton provides her with an edgy, breathless, and impatient voice that, at times, is an almost crooning stream-of-consciousness. Patton's approach for Anderson and his other associates is more conventional: they speak in fittingly tough, hardboiled tones. As for the voice of the monstrous outsider, it is surprisingly conversational and educated, with just a hint of chilling playfulness. This audiobook demonstrates King's ability to make even the most fantastic story believable and poignant, and Patton's unswerving talent for making fiction feel real. A Scribner hardcover. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

THE OUTSIDER, by Stephen King. (Scribner, $30.) When police officers arrest a small-town English teacher and Little League coach for murder, the case looks watertight. But this isn't a police procedural, it's a Stephen King novel; so nothing, of course, is what it seems. OUR KIND OF CRUELTY, by Araminta Hall. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In this searing, chilling sliver of perfection about a toxic relationship, the man is the crazy psychopath - or is he? That doubt lingers all the way through the stunning final pages of a book that may well turn out to be the year's best thriller. SAVING CENTRAL PARK: A History and a Memoir, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. (Knopf, $30.) The inspiring story of how one woman, in the face of considerable resistance, created a partnership to privately augment the funding and management of Manhattan's beloved park, rescuing what had become "a ragged 843acre wasteland." ROBIN, by Dave Itzkoff. (Times/Holt, $30.) A generous, appreciative biography of Robin Williams by a New York Times culture reporter. The author, who had access to Williams and members of the comedian's family, is an unabashed fan but doesn't shy away from the abundant messiness in his subject's personal life. INSEPARABLE: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous With American History, by Yunte Huang. (Liveright, $28.95.) In Huang's hands, the story of the conjoined twins Chang and Eng is as much an account of 19th-century American culture as a tale of exploited individuals who themselves became exploiters. SABRINA, by Nick Drnaso. (Drawn and Quarterly, $27.95.) This graphic novel is a Midwestern gothic tale for our times, recounting the story of a woman's disappearance and murder, seen through the eyes of her bereaved boyfriend as he watches the trolls and conspiracy theorists dissect her death online. It's a shattering work of art. SOME TRICK: Thirteen Stories, by Helen DeWitt. (New Directions, $22.95.) DeWitt's manic, brilliant new collection explores her interest in "fiction that shows the way mathematicians think." Populated by genW'ršÃ­š? iuses and virtuosos, the stories are zanily cerebral " and proceed with fractal precision. PATRIOT NUMBER ONE: American Dreams in Chinatown, by Lauren Hilgers. (Crown, $27.) This deeply reported account tracks an immigrant couple's struggle to remake their lives in America while staying connected to their hometown in China. SECRET SISTERS OF THE SALTY SEA, by Lynne Rae Perkins. (Greenwillow, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) An exquisite summer story about a girl's first beach vacation, in which she discovers the wonders of the ocean and shifts in sisterly bonds. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

The skillfully rendered accents of Will Patton bring this dark whodunit to life with dramatic skill that nicely conveys mood and tone. King (Mr. Mercedes) combines a police procedural with elements of the super-natural. A young child has been brutally assaulted and murdered in Flint City, OK, and Det. Ralph Anderson is certain that the perpetrator is popular Little League coach and high school English teacher Terry -Maitland. Anderson and several colleagues publicly arrest Maitland during a hotly contested baseball game. Then things start to unravel as Anderson learns that there is quite a bit of conflicting evidence. Several of Mait-land's teacher colleagues can vouch that he was with them attending a convention at the time of the murder, which is further confirmed by video from a local news channel. -VERDICT Recommended for King's myriad fans and for those wanting a mystery that's a bit outside the ordinary. ["King's fans may be dispirited by this latest dis-appointing thriller; however, his name alone will ensure it flies off the shelves": LJ 4/1/18 review of the Scribner hc.]-David Faucheux, Lafayette, LA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.If you're a little squeamish about worms, you're really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: "His throat was just gone," says the man who found the body. "Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something." Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stageand it doesn't help Anderson's world-weariness when the evil doesn't stop once Terry's in the ground. Natch, there's a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King's early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King's concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he's at his best, as always, when he's painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: "June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack." Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity's head caves in "as if it had been made of papier-mch rather than bone." And then there are those worms. Yuck.Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King's boundless legion of fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.