Stephen King Reviews New Scott Smith Novel
Posted on June 8, 2006
Scott Smith has a new thriller out this summer called The Ruins. Smith was the author of the 1993 novel, The Simple Plan, which was made into a film starring Bill Paxon and Billy Bob Thornton. Stephen King has a review of The Ruins here on Amazon.com.
The new book is here, and the question devotees of A Simple Plan will want answered is whether or not this book generates anything like Plan's harrowing suspense. The answer is yes. The Ruins is going to be America's literary shock-show this summer, doing for vacations in Mexico what Jaws did for beach weekends on Long Island. Is it as successful and fulfilling as a novel? The answer is not quite, but I can live with that, because it's riskier. There will be reviews of this book by critics who have little liking or understanding for popular fiction who'll dismiss it as nothing but a short story that has been bloated to novel length (I'm thinking of Michiko Kakutani, for instance, who microwaved Smith's first book). These critics, who steadfastly grant pop fiction no virtue but raw plot, will miss the dazzle of Smith's technique; The Ruins is the equivalent of a triple axel that just misses perfection because something's wrong with the final spin.The Ruins sounds like a great read. If Stephen King is willing to recommend it then it is worth adding to your summer reading stack. Like King mentioned, Scott Smith needs to write more frequently. Thirteen years between novels is far too long.It's hard to say much about the book without giving away everything, because the thing is as simple and deadly as a leg-hold trap concealed in a drift of leaves�or, in this case, a mass of vines. You've got four young American tourists--Eric, Jeff, Amy, and Stacy--in Cancun. They make friends with a German named Mathias whose brother has gone off into the jungle with some archeologists. These five, plus a cheerful Greek with no English (but a plentiful supply of tequila), head up a jungle trail to find Mathias's brother�the archaeologists�and the ruins.
