Just Finished Reading Stephen King's Secret Window, Secret Garden

Although I've possessed a copy of Stephen King's 1990 book Four Past Midnight for several years, for much of that time I had only gotten around to reading one of its four novellas: The Library Policeman.  With The Langoliers, I saw the television movie version in its entirety, so I wasn't motivated to read it...at least yet.  A little while back I did get around to reading The Sun Dog, which depends on the obsolete Polaroid camera process for it to have its full intended effect on the reader.  Which leaves Secret Window, Secret Garden, a story that I had put off for a long time because I had seen a short section of the film version starring Johnny Depp.  As it turns out, nothing was given away during that brief viewing, so when I read it for the first time last week the story was fresh, including the ending...although at a certain point I suspected what was "really" going on...after all, King had already written a variation on this same theme in an earlier novel...and no, I'm not telling you its name because that would give away the story...

Mort Rainey is a novelist with writer's block as he struggles to cope with his traumatic recent divorce.  He is staying alone at his (and ex-wife Amy's) vacation home in the woods...once again way out in rural Maine, near a small town once again a product of Stephen King's imagination.  A rustic man from Mississippi, identifying himself as John Shooter, knocks on his door one day and claims that Rainey stole his story, which he had titled Secret Window, Secret Garden and Mort as Sowing Season.  Mort denies this and offers proof...but the original Ellery Queen Mystery magazine in which it appeared many years earlier will take time to get there.  In the meantime, Shooter ratchets up the pressure...and, increasingly, the terror as he threatens and acts...

As sadly is the case with too many film adaptations to Stephen King's stories, the movie Secret Window, Secret Garden has an entirely different ending to it...why do they do that, whether you're talking about The Mist, The Shining, Pet Sematary, or others when the book's ending was so good and integral to the story?  And for some reason, the movie reverses the titles of Rainey's and Shooter's stories.  All this notwithstanding, I enjoyed Secret Window, Secret Garden...although in the final analysis it was a pretty gloomy tale...