The Library Policeman may be unknown to some casual Stephen King fans because it is actually a novella in his book Four Past Midnight, along with The Langoliers, The Sun Dog, and Secret Window, Secret Garden. All of these titles are available separately from HighBridge audio with differing narrators, unlike Different Seasons, which was released by Recorded Books back in the early 80’s with Frank Muller handling all the narration. The stories also feature musical interludes that usually pop up at the end of every chapter or during the most suspenseful moments of the narrative. A common criticism of the book as a whole is that for each of these stories King just rehashes an idea he explored more fully in an earlier novel, and with the exception of the Langoliers, this is a fair criticism, with the The Library Policeman being a variation of the plot used in IT. If you haven’t read that book you should probably read it so you can fully appreciate the story on its own merits without feeling the need to draw constant parallels between the two.
The story is about Sam Peebles, an insurance agent from Junction City, Iowa who ends up getting roped into giving a speech at a local meeting, Sam isn’t the most confident speaker, so he ends up going to the library to get some books and that’s where he runs into Ardelia Lortz, a librarian everyone in the town would just like to forget. The story is not one of King’s best in terms of its pacing and construction. It takes a while to get going and Peebles’ first encounter with the librarian is stretched out far too long and is excessively wordy, as King tries too hard to establish that Lortz and the library itself are evil. He violates the old English teacher rule of writing, “show, don’t tell”, even going so far as to tell the reader “[The Library] was spooky.” However the scene where Peebles first meets the Library Policeman is as scary as anything he has written and the flashback sequence late in the story is so disturbing it’s difficult to read/listen to. King could’ve easily left this scene out or made it less graphic, but then the reader wouldn’t fully understand the extent of Sam Peebles’ fears.
Ken Howard isn’t a well known name in the audiobook industry but he does a fine job reading the story, creating distinct voices for all the characters. Even though all of his female characters sound about 40-50 years old, he does a great job characterizing Dave Duncan, the town drunk who has a troubled past that intersects with Ardelia Lortz, giving him a deep, weathered and reflective voice that demands that you respect him more fully as a character.
Waiting on the Bus 