Thinner
Published: 19, November 1984
Author: Stephen King
Genre: American, Classics, Drama, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Media Tie-In, Supernatural, Thriller
Check out the review of this book here:
Summary
While driving across town with his wife Heidi giving him a massage, Billy Halleck, a wealthy, arrogant, and morbidly obese lawyer, is distracted and runs over and murders an old Romani woman.
Billy exploits his contacts in the local police and criminal court to evade punishment and get himself acquitted.
Outside the courts, the woman's father, Taduz Lemke, exacts vengeance by casting a curse on Billy, using the term "thinner," and Billy begins to lose weight fast, regardless of how much he eats.
Billy contacts a number of specialists, all of whom fear cancer, but they are unable to pinpoint the source of his weight loss.
Billy later finds that the judge who ruled over his case has developed scales on his skin and that the police officer who lied on Billy's behalf has developed terrible acne. Both guys finally kill themselves.
Billy, now malnourished, traces the Romani band north through the New England seacoast to Maine with the aid of private investigators and Richie "The Hammer" Ginelli, a former customer with links to organized crime.
At their camp, he meets Lemke and attempts to persuade him to withdraw the curse, but Lemke refuses, insisting that Billy be brought to justice.
Billy is thrown out of the Romani camp, but not before Gina, Lemke's great-granddaughter, shoots him in the hand with a ball bearing.
Richie responds by dispatching a mob doctor to cure Billy's hand before arriving in person to scare the Romani camp.
Lemke agrees to meet with Billy when Richie finishes with the locals. Lemke takes a strawberry pie with him, which he tops with blood from Billy's injured hand.
Unless Billy passes the curse on to someone else by persuading them to eat the pie, the weight loss will cease for a brief period and then restart. Billy is advised by Lemke to eat the pie himself so that he can die with dignity.
Billy goes home after discovering Richie's severed hand in his car and learning that he has been murdered, intending to offer the pie to Heidi, whom he has blamed for his situation.
However, the next morning, he discovers that she and their daughter Linda had devoured the pie. He slices a piece for himself, realizing that they are both doomed so that he might join them in death.
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