The master of horror is back once again in convenient paperback form.

He can still keep a person up at night better than most, but this time around, Stephen King is keeping millions awake with an attack of conscience.

When “The Green Mile” was first published, it appeared in six serial volumes, one released each month. The first of its kind in publishing history, all six volumes appeared on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously. The newest version brings all six mini-novels together into one, and the result is thought-provoking at the very least.

Everyday, prison guard Paul Edgecombe makes the trip to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, known to Edgecombe and the other guards as the green mile, to supervise the criminals on death row.

Executions are part of Edgecombe’s daily responsibility and he leads many to their deaths in “Old Sparky,” the mile’s affectionate nickname for the electric chair.

But everything Edgecombe believes is put to the test when inmate John Coffey walks through the doors.

Coffey, “like the drink but not spelled the same,” according to him, is convicted for the rape and murder of two small girls, the Detterick twins.

The trial was swift and very clear cut.

The black, 6’8″ giant was found in a field with the two naked dead girls in his arms, sobbing like a baby. The verdict seemed obvious, and John Coffey was sentenced to death.

But immediately, Edgecombe sensed something different about the shy giant.

From the moment Coffey joined the green mile, nothing was ever the same, and Coffey was the last prisoner Edgecombe put to death in Cold Mountain.

King’s novel is full of one unexpected twist after another, and the pages seem to fly by. Each character, including a rodent named Mr. Jingles, is vital to King’s plot, and their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.

The genius of “The Green Mile” is its form. Though not obvious from the first page, King’s novel is actually Paul Edgecombe’s first-hand account, written in his last days at a nursing home.

The reader is taken back and forth between times, and questions are posed and answered by the Edgecombe of both past and present.

Edgecombe is led to question the beliefs his livelihood is founded upon, and King’s readers will be the next to question their beliefs.

The man sentenced to die in the electric chair has a strange and wonderful gift, which in the end, will be his downfall.

4 stars out of five

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Kelsey Foutch is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Waterloo.