11. 'The Fifth Quarter' and 12. 'Battleground' (both 1972).
The next two stories on the extensive first list were easy to slot together; they share similar characters, similar ideas, a similar vibe . The only major difference, other than obvious content-based ones, is that I really liked one and really hated the other. The Fifth Quarter I'm going to start this by saying I am a bit of a King purist; I don't gravitate towards work that is out of his normal zone. I haven't read all of the Dark Towers series, for example (don't hurt me, I promise I will!), and I wasn't particularly enamoured with the Bill Hodges trilogy. I like King horror. Of course, there are exceptions, like the unquestinably wonderful Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption , but generally, you'll find my favourites sitting comfortably in the horror section of the bookshop. The Fifth Quarter is a gangster story . In it, Jerry Tarkanian (the first of several ridiculously over the top gangster names) hunts down the men who killed his friend, an...