FICTION

THE GREEN MILE: Part One: The Two Dead Girls by Stephen King (Signet: $2.99 paper; 92 pp.). A serial novel by Stephen King? To be published in three-buck-paperbacks, in six monthly installments, beginning with this slim volume? The idea no doubt has its biggest boosters in the publisher’s marketing department but King is, from the reader’s point of view, the perfect choice for such a project, since he specializes in drawn-out, suspenseful storytelling. King writes in the introduction to “The Green Mile” that he was attracted to the serial form because it intensifies the experience of both the reader and the writer--the reader, because the work is rationed and its conclusion impossible to flip to, and the writer, because of the pressure to produce--but he obviously doesn’t mind linking himself to the greatest serial-novelist of them all, Charles Dickens. As for “The Green Mile” itself, it’s nothing special, so far: A huge black man awaits execution for having raped and killed two young white girls, his story told by a death row superintendent who senses that his prisoner is really a gentle giant. King claims he doesn’t yet know exactly how the novel will end, but one thing’s pretty certain: If this method of publishing flops, King will henceforth be known as a serial killer.