BAG OF BONES, by Stephen King, Scribner, hardcover, 529 pages, $28.

Stephen King pulls the ultimate in suspense tricks-and-bleats in “Bag of Bones,” his newest horror tale and the first publication from Scribner presses. Yes, there are ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump (upside the heads of characters, no less). But the real tease in this tale of paranormal profundity is King’s commentary about the craft of writing itself.

The central character in “Bag of Bones” is Mike Noonan, a best-selling author of romantic thrillers — not too terribly unlike our own homeboy. After his beloved wife, Jo, dies of an aneurysm in the parking lot of a Rite Aid, Noonan has the most terrifying thing of all happen to him: He gets writer’s block. Four years after Jo’s death, he still can’t get it up on his computer screen, and decides to head to Sara Laughs, the lakeside retreat where his marriage and his muse found much success in the past.

Of course, that’s where all the trouble begins. Sara Laughs is haunted by Sara Red Top, a black blues singer who was brutally killed by white supremacist rapists at the turn of the century. Her young son, who witnessed the death and consequently was drowned by the bad guys, also puts in an appearance (or, more accurately, sobs in the background). And Jo shows up, too, both to save her hubby and to help purge the house of its century-long vengeance.

Somewhere along King’s circuitous plot line, Noonan meets and falls in love with Mattie, a single mom whose daughter Kyra is the spiritual sister of the baby Jo was carrying when she died. Noonan helps Mattie and Kyra settle legal disputes with Mattie’s computer mogul father-in-law, Max Devore, who is in a very user-unfriendly mode, indeed. At the denouement, everyone shows up for an all-out battle of the hexes.

After reading the first 30 pages of “Bag of Bones,” Tabitha King supposedly said, “Oh Steve, it’s another writer.” To which King answered, “You never pick up a Dick Francis novel and say, `Oh Dick, it’s another jockey.”‘ Although the story has superficial similarities to “The Shining” and “Misery,” both of which were about writers, its real analogues are the more recent, hyperfantastical novels “Insomnia” and “Desperation.”

King attests to using the supernatural as a vehicle for examining the ordinary. But, in fact, it’s tempting to want him to use his God-given talent to examine his God-given talent. And that’s the tease in this tome. King gets us thinking about writers and their lives, he draws us into Noonan’s inner world, and then coughs up a lot of gory details plus a horrific rape before, on the very last pages, giving any real commentary about the life of a writer.

As usual, regular King fans who are more interested in the sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of King’s brand-name yarns will get what they want out of this muscle-bound book. The details and digressions are frustrating, and the first real inkling of suspense doesn’t come until page 128. But it’s all there — albeit not quite as craftily done as in earlier books — for those who like to take that dark and eerie walk with Poppa King.

Others will wonder why King doesn’t take the really scary plunge and wrangle with the psychological inner ghosts of his characters rather than the cheapness of Hollywood special effects.

Maybe those are unreasonable expectations given the genre that has propelled King into the slot of the world’s best-selling writer. Like he needs tips from dissenting readers.

But he’s such a literary guy, and that comes out all over the place in “Bag of Bones,” which has endless and exciting references to other writing including the central themes of Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.” The title, we are told, comes from Thomas Hardy, who said even the most brilliantly drawn character in fiction is no more than a bag of bones. But even the bag of bones in this book isn’t as creepy — or as satisfying — as the ones we’ve chewed on with King in the past.