Like a lot of his fellow wealthy liberal intellectuals in the arts, Stephen King is staunchly anti-Trump. So you can’t help wondering if his latest book might be a sort of veiled political statement about the abuses of power big government can wield in the shadows. The Institute is a bit like The Shop, the sinister unnamed government organisation that pursued Charlie McGee in King’s 1980 book Firestarter.

The Institute similarly kidnaps and imprisons children who show latent talents for mental telepathy and telekinesis, augmenting and amplifying their abilities through abusive and inhumane treatment and forcing them to assassinate political figures remotely. The young hero, Luke, finds himself stolen from his parents and whisked away to a nightmarish new life, but he’s smart enough to plan an escape and bust his incredible new friends out in the process.

It’s an odd entry into King’s canon. It’s not a horror novel (a genre he hasn’t worked in directly for years), but a thriller, yet the idea of children kidnapped and subjected to such treatment is so intense you wonder if it will trigger some readers.

Other than that all King’s usual trademarks are there: friendships and alliances between good guys emerge a little bit too easily, his adult male heroes are kind of bland and interchangeable, and (despite modern cultural references like the internet, current movies and Trump) it seems set in an eternal proto-Americana 1960s – everything located in small forest or dustbowl towns.

But as always, his prose is accessible and the plot propulsive so, despite it being far from a classic in his canon, you’ll breeze through it and, if you’re a King fan, the aesthetic will be as comfortable as an old slipper.

Reviewed by Drew Turney