The Dark Half

The Dark Half is a horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1989. Publishers Weekly listed The Dark Half as the second best-selling book of 1989 behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1993. Stephen King wrote several books under a pseudonym, Richard Bachman, during the 1970s and 1980s. Most of the Bachman novels were darker and more cynical in nature, featuring a far more visceral sense of horror than the psychological, gothic style common in many of King's most famous works. When King was identified as Bachman, he wrote The Dark Half – about an author with a sinister parasitic twin – in response to his outing. The book's central villain, George Stark, was named in honor of Richard Stark, the pen name of writer Donald E. Westlake under which he wrote some of his darkest, most violent books. King telephoned Westlake personally to ask permission. King's own "Richard Bachman" pseudonym was also partly named for Stark: King had been reading a Richard Stark novel at the time he chose the pen name.