Sometimes, you hardly know where to begin. And so it is with "Duma Key," latest in a gloriously long line of tales from the uber-popular Stephen King.

A few years ago, King wrote a somewhat irreverent but entirely useful how-to book simply titled "On Writing." Mixed in the middle of his theories and practices was a simple recognition of why he toils so faithfully in a genre that too often escapes the attention of the elite: "I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin."

And that, perhaps, is as good a place as any to start talking about the magical mystery tour awaiting readers here. For nowhere in King's body of work has the unquiet coffin been so effectively employed.

He opens with a first-person introduction of Edgar Freemantle, a successful Minnesota businessman whose life is torn asunder by an accident that leaves him an amputee and then some. In addition to the loss of his right arm, he suffered a brain injury, shattered ribs and hip, eye damage and more. Worse, his rage-filled recovery costs him his 25-year marriage to Pam, mother of his two daughters, Ilse and Melinda.

He seeks help from a psychologist, Dr. Kamen, who asks if he has any long-neglected interests. When Edgar says he used to enjoy sketching, Kamen urges him to return to it. "You need hedges ... hedges against the night."

		"DUMA KEY" By Stephen King Scribner $28)

Soon, Edgar's bound for Duma Key, an isolated strip of land off the west coast of Florida, moving into a beach home he calls "Big Pink." There, he continues rehabilitation and begins an unusual but artistically brilliant series of sketches and paintings.

Edgar's new habitat contributes to the scary atmosphere, with the sounds and sights one associates with the sea. And he learns previous residents of Big Pink were also artists -- Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp among them.

He quickly befriends a neighbor, Wireman (first name Jerome but used just once), who looks after Elizabeth Eastlake, an elderly woman whose eccentricities belie a losing battle with Alzheimer's. The back story on Elizabeth reveals a haunting history of drowned twin sisters, a skin-diving father and other visages both imagined and terrifyingly real.

Even more terrifying are Edgar's sketches, which are psychic in nature, dredging up Eastlake family secrets while also foretelling current and future happenings. As his artistry unfolds, bringing him critical acclaim, so does the macabre mystery he must solve lest Duma Key swallow him whole and bury anew its secrets.

Thanks in large part to King's storytelling mastery, this is one muscular -- not flabby -- 600-page tome.

Apart from its obvious center, the nightmarish struggle of a man earning his second lease on life, "Duma Key" is about the fear of isolation, the power of creativity and the untold stories of the dead.

It's nice to see King retaining his edge after a bumpy ride a few years back. This novel comes on the heels of "Lisey's Story," which was more about love than horror and exceedingly well-written. This, too, has the usual pop culture references and well-crafted turns of phrase:

"They drove two days, finishing up on a dirt road in Iowa, somewhere between Nowhere and Nowhere in Particular."

More than that, the novel is captivating in its burgeoning sense of dread, its character development and, most particularly, its originality. King can be self-derivative at times, but his new novel is as fresh as a Hemingway sentence is short.

And it's no mistake to have those authors' names in the same sentence.