Double Feature by Owen King

I've finished reading Double Feature by Owen King (ebook ARC; the on sale date is my bday in March). Sam Nolan is the estranged son of a beloved B-Movie actor (think Bruce Campbell or Vincent Price). Although he chooses to go into film himself, Sam's own work is serious and dour, and when a disaster hits his first major production his life is knocked off the tracks. Now, eight years later, he's trying to figure out what went wrong while also coming to terms with his elderly father.

King is the son of Stephen King and the brother of horror writer Joe Hill, so it's hard not to see the parallels between the father/son dynamic in the novel and his own career (after all, this is a 'literary' novel, not horror or a thriller). I'm not sure those comparisons are apt; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but their presence lends an extra layer to the novel all the same.

I though the denouement was a bit passe, but I did notice that I 'knew' these characters quite well by the end of the novel, and felt quite attached to them. Overall, a well done book. Grade: A

Book #91 of 2012