by Stephen King
First published 1998
Todd Bowden looks like the kind of kid every parent wants. Good grades, a paper route, a clean suburban life. Then he figures out that his elderly neighbor, Mr. Dussander, is a former Nazi war criminal who has been hiding in plain sight for decades. Todd has the power to expose him. He does not use it. Instead he sits down at Dussander's kitchen table and starts asking questions. He wants to hear everything. The camps. The torture. The bodies. The more Todd learns, the more he needs to know, and something in that need begins to change him. Dussander is not just a captive audience. He is a teacher, and Todd turns out to be his best student yet. "Apt Pupil" is one of four novellas collected in Different Seasons, alongside "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption," "The Body," and "The Breathing Method." Together they show a Stephen King working far outside horror, more interested in what ordinary people choose to become than in anything that goes bump in the dark.
Genres: fiction, drama, classic-literature, literary-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, introspective, morally-complex, thought-provoking, unsettling
Tropes: corruption-arc, mentor-student-relationship, unreliable-morality
Setting: suburban-america
Period: 20th-century
512 pages · Paperback · Signet
Content warnings: child-abuse, torture