King captures small town life, the fears of adults and children, and the evolving nature of the battle between good and evil with insight and in an engaging style. ( )

Brilliant. This was the book that gave me the reading bug back in 1982. Re-read this about five times. ( )

Classic vampire tale, definately one of the better ones.

Salem's Lot was one of the first Stephen Kings I read, but even as a teenager I was already familiar with the story from the David Soul-starring TV mini series. (By the way, has anyone seen the Rob Lowe remake from a few years back? Worth my time?) Reading it again after all these years, I was captivated by the strength of the storytelling. King is at his best when given a large cast - or a small town - to play with, and there are many times in the first half of this book that I found myself wishing the horror wouldn't even come, such was I enjoying the everyday goings on in the Lot. King creates well-rounded characters you care about, so much that you hate the idea that anything horrible might happen to them... even though you know it's going to. Salem's Lot is a huge sprawling epic of a story (yet much tighter than much of the author's recent output), and were it not for all the vampires, it'd now be regarded as one of the great American novels of the 70s - by everybody, not just those of us unblinkered by genre snobbery.

Read the full review at my blog. ( )

This was the first horror novel I read and what a doozey! It switched me on to a genre that has become my favourite and I am eternally grateful to Stephen King for that! What I found most compelling about this story was the friendship between Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. Two characters that are, in their own ways, lost, find each other and a common purpose. As a child of 13 I was engaged by the idea of a teenager and an adult operating on the same level. A memorable book and one I have returned to many times over the years. ( )