Jack of Spades, a Tale of Suspense / Joyce Carol Oates / 224 pages / Scary Story, October Challenge

Andrew J.  Rush has been referred to as "the gentlemen's Stephen King."  He is the fifty-three year old well-to-do author of twenty-eight mystery-suspense novels.  Just "as King experimented with a fictitious alter ego some years ago, namely Richard Bachman," so Rush wrote five noir pseudonym novels, published electronically under the name Jack of Spades.  His Jack of Spades alter ego is a secret probably because of his writing style and subject matter.  When Rush is summoned to court to answer to charges of theft and plagiarism, his world is knocked off its axis.