BLACK HOUSE, by Stephen King and Peter Straub, Random House, New York, 2001, 625 pages, $28.95.

Given the wham-bam success that accompanied the publication of “The Talisman,” the 1984 collaboration between horror writers Stephen King and Peter Straub, a sequel not only was awaited but inevitable. Seventeen years later, the destined-to-be blockbuster follow-up “Black House,” a mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror and social commentary, will arrive at bookstores Saturday, Sept. 15.

The best part of the story is the return of Jack Sawyer, once the 12-year-old, Tom Sawyerish hero of “The Talisman” and now a retired LAPD homicide detective estranged from his magical past. The adult Jack has moved to the small town of French Landing, Wis., and is determined to live an unremarkable life, despite the unexplained black feathers and robin’s eggs that keep popping up along his trail.

Small though it is, French Landing has a killer on the loose. Dubbed “The Fisherman” by local newspaperman and plot annoyance Wendell Green, the villain has committed a spate of child murders that has shaken the safety of the town. The Fisherman captures the young ones, kills them, then he eats them and delivers harrowing notes or body parts to grieving parents. When young Ty Marshall becomes the latest victim, French Landing’s beloved deejay and cool cat Henry Leyden, a blind man who is Jack’s neighbor and best friend, persuades the retired cop to join local forces to hunt the killer.

It’s not long before Jack understands that his presence in French Landing and the occurrence of dangerous town events are oddly related. Through the intervention of his old insightful pal Speedy and the mad visions of Judy Marshall, Ty’s scrappy mother, Jack learns that Ty and he are spiritually connected by the forces in the Territories, an alternate world first introduced in Jack’s fantastical journey in the last book. Is it possible that, while Ty appears to have been murdered in this world, he might still be alive in a parallel one? Can the Harley-driving gang of philosophy-spewing beer drinkers help save the boy’s life? Will Sawyer’s Gang, the posse that gallops off to find Ty, survive a visit to the Black House, a haunted property on the edge of town? Just who is the Crimson King? And has anybody noticed the strange bathroom habits of Charles “Burny” Burnside over at the elder care facility?

The answers to these questions are the creepy rhythm to which “Black House” beats. King and Straub wrote the book through a series of meetings in New York and Florida, and by phone and e-mail. Or “chunk by chunk,” as Straub said in an interview with PublishersWeekly.

The narrative, however, is seamlessly undivided between the two writers’ otherwise distinct voices. King fans and Straub fans – not to mention “Talisman” devotees – will find an anchor in the sometimes elegant, sometimes raunchy scenes and situations of this gory tale.

At its best, the story is playfully funny about quirky people in a small town. It is also deeply concerned with the harrowing modern injustices and violence committed against children.

At its worst, “Black House” is long-winded and flabby. It may have more than 600 pages, but the book is no page-turner. The visionary blind man, the mystic child, the conjuring black janitor: this is all territory that has, in one way or another, been covered by these two prolific writers, whose breadth of imagination and sweep of talent have plumbed these themes enough already.

The most interesting aspect of “Black House” comes in two meditations that run throughout the book. The first bears an inner-child allegory, a look into the waning self-knowledge that can occur in an individual between adolescence and adulthood – and the nostalgic drive to get it back in later years. The second is about the bizarre nature of borderlands and of the slippage – of laws, of convention, of behavior – that occurs there. No one plunges into these spaces more fearlessly than King and Straub, and that is the true strength at the foundation of this story and at the heart of Jack Sawyer.

While the strongest ties in this novel are to “The Talisman,” there are also echoes of King’s “Dark Tower” series, pop culture, and of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson. The lasting effect, however, is pure King and Straub. There are two disappointing deaths by the end, but the epilogue, which is a tiny Valentine, makes up for at least one.