Here, an organisation is behind the abduction of children in the United States, (and, we learn later, around the world). The American children are stolen and taken to a facility hidden in the woods of Maine - where else but King's home State? - where they are subjected to often brutal experiments to determine their particular psychic abilities.

The dubious reasoning for this systematic abuse is revealed later in the novel, when we see how children in a different section of the Institute (the 'Back Half') are used, and used up.

Echoes of current detention camps in the US (and elsewhere) come to mind. Even parallels with concentration camps and medical experiments carried out by the Nazis are made explicit; one employee of the Institute thinks of his leader that she "was like that unknown Nazi buffoon who thought it would be a terrific idea to put Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free, over the entrance to Auschwitz".

As the book progresses, we find out just how this comparison is sickeningly accurate.

King's dark vision of horror is often balanced by individuals confronting and challenging forces that seem impossibly strong. Here an ex-cop Tim Jamieson, whose drifting into a small town in South Carolina opens the novel, an escapee, and a very young child will be called on, alongside a motley collection of other unlikely heroes.

The marginalised seem impossibly outgunned. It's very much a well-funded and organised force fighting against those individuals who can not stand injustice. Good sheriffs in Westerns come to mind, facing down bands of criminals, but here the bad guys have jets, professional hitmen, high level protection, and the very best weapons that America can manufacture.

King aficionados will be reminded of The Stand and even The Dark Tower, but you don't have to have read those novels to enjoy this newer work.

That two of the main characters in the book meet at all is shown to be the result of of seemingly insignificant and spontaneous decisions; 'Great events turn on small hinges.' Travel, on planes, trains, boats and in cars, is contrasted with the enforced confinement of the children in the Institute.

The titular Institute only sees its inmates in terms of certain measurable abilities, and ignores their character and intelligence. This blindness that will come into play in the novel's resolution. While not giving the ending away, there is certainly no painless triumph of good over evil.

King has never been one to shy away from likeable characters being sacrificed. He has chosen two Bible quotations for his epigraphs, one from the Old Testament about Samson killing more with his own death than he did during his life, through destroying the house of the Philistines. The second is from Matthew, about the fate facing those who hurt children. The relevance of the second quotation is apparent throughout the novel, whereas the first is only revealed much later on.

King (like a much more benign Institute) is a master at capturing the readers and not letting them go; a statement that will surprise very few.

But what is also admirable in his books is the description of everyday American life; the fact that it is not uncommon for someone to have to work two jobs to get by, the different laws on storing dangerous goods in different States, the type of pickup truck that country people often drive (I had to look up 'stake sides') or the food eaten. So much is like life in Australia, but many distinctions remain.

For example, a kind stranger tosses a very hungry kid some food: "Heaven was in that bag....Heaven turned out to be a cheese-and sausage biscuit, a Hostess Fruit Pie, and a bottle of Carolina Sweetheart Spring Water".

The touching gesture is made more real through this detailing of the sort of food that would be easily accessible to a worker on the railways. At the same time a humorous link between a notion such as heaven and American brand-name food is drawn.

King's ability to draw memorable characters, capture something of the essential feel of his country and times, and put them into exciting and unstoppable stories punctuated with acute observations makes him the nearest thing to Dickens that we have writing today.

The Institute ranks amongst his finest works, and it will add a welcome touch of horror to many Australian summers.