Stephen King’s serial book “The Green Mile” is about to get longer with Part 2, “The Mouse on the Mile,” which will be available in bookstores Monday, April 29.

That’s longer as in: This 92-page segment goes on for a Maine mile and doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

We’re back in the company of elderly narrator Paul Edgecombe, who is writing this tale from memory while in a Georgia nursing home. He takes us back to 1932, when he was senior guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary and was in charge of the Green Mile, a version of Death Row.

The important incarcerated characters are a wild boy named William Wharton, a flamboyant Cajun murderer named Delacroix, and an eerily cognizant brown mouse called Steamboat Willy by the guards — even though Delacroix tells them that the mouse calls himself Mr. Jingles.

The mouse takes up with Delacroix, who feeds him Canada Mints and builds him a home out of a cigar box and cotton balls. Intuitively, the mouse dislikes Percy, a feisty guard who carries a big stick and has a weird craving to watch men die by electric chair.

And there you have the basic outline of this next installment to King’s six-part monthly series. We know the story is moving along because we have another book in our hands, but there’s not much in the way of plot or character development in this one.

We do, however, get a detailed description of Paul’s urinary track infection. King persists in his fascination with such topics, and it never really adds much depth to his work. It’s a little dalliance of his and one that apparently must be tolerated if we want the real story, which is generally worth reading.

Presumably, King is giving us information we’ll need later in the story. At this point, however, it seems burdened with extraneous details and digressions.

There is one fairly hilarious chapter in which the guards hold a mock execution as a rehearsal for a real one. But probably the most compelling part of this series so far is the narrator. Paul is an admirable man — compassionate, humane and witty. He falls into that category of King characters, such as Dolores Claibourne, who are down-home sensible and uncannily ethical without being idealized.

Readers don’t seem to mind that this isn’t King’s best work, however. It’s likely that Part 2 will follow Part 1 onto national bestseller lists.

If you’re a hardcore fan of Stephen King the serious writer, don’t despair. There’s an antidote for those who are looking for some meaty suspense and top-notch crafting out of the world’s bestselling writer. Read “The Man in the Black Suit,” a short story which appeared in the Oct. 31, 1994, issue of The New Yorker, and last weekend was given first-place honors in the O. Henry Awards series. The story was published this month in “Prize Stories 1996.”

“Black Suit” is about a 9-year-old farm boy who goes fishing alone near Castle Rock and meets up with the Devil in the Maine woods. Both horror story and psychological tale, “Black Suit” shows off King as a thoughtful writer and a masterful storyteller.

One hopes that those same qualities come along in the next segment of “The Green Mile.” Part 3, called “”Coffey’s Hands,” will be available May 24.