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Description:
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King emulates Charles Dickens by publishing a novel in monthly installments. Officially launched on March 25, The Green Mile is a six-part jailhouse story that inevitably invites comparison with King's novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and the movie based on it. That story concerns a murderer sentenced to life in prison and is told by a fellow convict; this one is about killers sentenced to death and is told by the superintendent of the cell block in which they await execution. It is 1932, and the newest arrival to E Block is enormous John Coffey, who apparently raped and murdered two nine-year-old girls. Quiet, remorseful, compliant to his captors, Coffey is a mystery man about whom nothing preceding his crimes is known--at least for now. Still virtually the best pop-fiction writer around, King foreshadows enough to start the itch for The Mouse on the Mile on April 29, Coffey's Hands on May 27, The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix on June 24, Night Journey on July 29, and the yet untitled finale on August 26 without stinting on credible, appealing characters like the narrator or appalling ones like a mean prison guard. (N.B. The last page here is an application and rules for a contest; it will get torn out, but there is no story text on it. Also, there is a Green Mile page on the World Wide Web; is this necessary?) Ray Olson
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