His dream world consists of keeping a scrap-book of newspaper articles on murders and mass murderers and fantasising about fighting back and killing his bullies. Life is hard and he is anxious to the point of incontinence.

The book had been sitting on my shelf unread for the last couple of years and now, having read it within a week or so, I'm wondering why I had left it for so long.Oskar is 12 years old and relentlessly bullied at school. I'd heard that the film had missed out much that was in the book (I am not surprised) and this left me curious. I was taken by the simplicity, the atmosphere and horrific beauty of the film that I just had to get the book. I haven't read a horror book for many years and, unusually for me, I bought this book after I had seen the Swedish film. In fact, Let the Right One In takes me back to my King reading youth which lies somewhere in the 1980's and not far from the year in which this book is set (1981). Lindqvist has been compared to Stephen King which is a comparison not without merit as he matches King blow for blow with this story. Plus, the visuals work better in film than in the book. You don't miss anything, and the movie makes a little more sense. Maybe this is just a case of liking the first version you see (like sometimes you hear the remix or cover first, and you like that better than the original song), but I recommend the movie over the book. It was like Lindqvist just kept writing and writing and writing, then he had to pee, came back, and realized he had written 40,000 pages. And if you stop reading, you're going to forget what happened. You lose what the author is trying to say, because there are so many storylines. Every detail is explored, every thought, every idea, every conversation is brought out into long detail.

'Let the Right One In' is pretty much the same, but much, much longer. The reason to read a book after the movie is to see what you missed - what 'really' happened. I love the story, and I love the concept, but there were a lot of places where I could have pressed fast-forward. Good, now that that's off my chest, let's continue.

Let me in john ajvide lindqvist