Thinner
Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

"Thinner" the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispered, and caressed his cheek, like a lover...
Billy Halleck, good husband, loving father, lives in Connecticut and practices law in New York City. He is both beneficiary and victim of the American Good Life: he has an expensive home, a nice family, and a rewarding job... but is is also fifty pounds overweight, and, as his doctor keeps reminding him, he is thirty six years old - edging into heart attack country.
Then Billy Halleck sideswipes and old Gypsy woman as she is crossing the street in their quiet little southern Connecticut town of Fairview, and everything in his pleasant, upwardly mobile life changes. He is exonerated in the local court by a friendly judge and sheriff... but a blacker, far worse judgment has been passed on him, nevertheless, Billy Halleck begins losing weight. He is pleased at first, then worried, and finally terrified. He can't stop it. He eats and eats but the weight flies off.
Beginning in suburban Connecticut and climaxing in rural Maine, Thinner is a novel of one man's quest to find the source of his nightmare and to reverse it before he becomes... nothing at all.

Oddly enough, had I read this novel back in the days when people did not know that Richard Bachman was a pen name for Stephen King, I would have thought it to be very much like a Stephen King novel

It isn't a very long book, and it's a fairly easy read. I was able to read it in two days, but granted, I read very quickly and I read a lot.

The plot was interesting and as the book went on became more and more suspenseful just as it should have. The Gypsies were kept mysterious and while the main character and even his mafia friend who aided him in the end were fairly well fleshed out, his family was not.

One interesting twist was even though the judge was growing scales and the police office was erupting in sores, no one, not his doctor nor his family believed him that this was a curse. Even when he was eating thousands of calories a day and losing pound after pound, everyone thought he was either sick or it was all in his head. On one hand, I'm not sure how anyone could think that weight loss of that sort could be in someone's head. On the other hand, it helped to frustrate the character to no end and gave him nowhere to turn. He knew he had to find the Gypsy that laid the curse upon him or die thin.

While not up to the later works of King, this is still a very good novel and definitely worth the read. In my library, it was listed under Bachman because King used that pen name when writing it. I would definitely recommend this for a die hard King fan and I would also recommend it for anyone who is interested in a suspenseful and well written novel that isn't too long.

My rating: Four out of five snails.