理查德·巴克曼是斯蒂芬·金使用的一个笔名。在斯蒂芬·金的写作生涯起步之初，出版商普遍认为一位作者每年只宜出一本新书，多了不易被市场接受。为了出版更多作品而又不至于让读者厌倦金这一“品牌”，斯蒂芬·金产生了用另一个名字发表作品的念头，他说服出版商采纳了他这一想法。

斯蒂芬·金曾经声明，他使用巴克曼这一笔名还有寻求自己在“斯蒂芬·金”这一名号之外价值的用心，同时也想看看自己的成就究竟应归因于才华还是运气。因此他在以巴克曼的名义出版新书时刻意避免在市场营销活动时露面，然而他还是没能弄清有关“是才华还是运气”的问题。巴克曼的某部作品首印售出两万八千册，但巴克曼其实就是斯蒂芬·金这一秘密揭开后，销量立即翻了十番。

The last of the Richard Bachman novels, recently recovered and published for the first time. Stephen King's "dark half" may have saved the best for last.

A fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze in 1973 on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"), but in late 2006 King found the original typescript of Blaze among his papers at the University of Maine's Fogler Library ("How did this get here?!"), and decided that with a little revision it ought to be published.

Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. -- of the crimes committed against him and the crimes he commits, including his last, the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs -- and then threw him down again. After escaping an abusive institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a seasoned criminal who thinks he has all the answers. But then George is killed, and Blaze, though haunted by his partner, is on his own.

He becomes one of the most sympathetic criminals in all of literature. This is a crime story of surprising strength and sadness, with a suspenseful current sustained by the classic workings of fate and character -- as taut and riveting as Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.