The famous King formula -- the teaming of stuff as mundane as rusty cowlings with mind-blowing über-evil -- took a little vacation with the 1998 novel "Bag of Bones," King's shot at an intimate psychological creepfest. "Bag of Bones" was a solid Gothic, but the fans didn't bite, or at least not in as great a number as they have in the past. "Dreamcatcher," his first full-length novel since then, features more explosions and car chases, more gore and more skin-crawling horror. It will make you see bacon and the mold that grows on food left too long in the fridge in a whole new and unsettling light. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, with a breathless race leading up to a denouement designed to induce nail-biting. In short, it's a more reliable genre vehicle, with the kind of panoramic framework, large cast of characters and grandiose themes that work so well, in entirely different trappings, for Anne Rice.

"Dreamcatcher" is also King's post-accident novel, written by hand as he was recovering from being hit by a car while walking on a road near his home. The author sustained grave injuries, and one of the characters in "Dreamcatcher," an assistant professor called Jonesy by his buddies, has had nearly the same experience; it leaves him with a broken hip and foggy memories of having cheated death. (We can only marvel to learn that it took King six and a half months to write a 600-page novel in longhand.) This isn't showy or self-pitying; instead, Jonesy's exasperation with his faltering body is one of the details that ground the book. For even when King's dishing out cranked-up scenarios involving military command centers and the threat of global plague, he keeps his homey touch. Though the larger stage mechanics of "Dreamcatcher" sometimes feel creaky, even occasionally rote, there's a reverent attention to the friendship rituals of men and boys, to the wobbly self-confidence in an accident survivor, to the sheer difficulty of being a reasonably decent person, that rings true.

What doesn't, or at least not always, is the horror. Too many of the elements in "Dreamcatcher" seem borrowed, from the premise -- quite early in the book we realize we're in "X-Files" territory, though there's a dab of "The Andromeda Strain" too -- to the characters. The semipsychotic special forces commander who runs amok through the novel is named Kurtz, but the fact that King acknowledges this "Heart of Darkness" and "Apocalypse Now" gloss, and the fact that the character himself has knowingly chosen the name, doesn't make this any less of a groaner. He's still a store-bought figure, even if King has intentionally left the tag on. "Dreamcatcher" is studded with pop culture references from Scooby Doo to the "Alien" movies to an apparently meaningless reference that only serious "Lord of the Rings" buffs will catch: a character named Underhill. There's even a sly bit about "The Florida Presidency" that makes "Dreamcatcher" notably timely for a novel.

King is the last writer you'd expect to go winkingly postmodern; his characteristic use of brand names and TV show titles usually serves to anchor his books in quotidian suburbia -- all the better to creep us out when the going gets weird. That's the trouble, though, with "Dreamcatcher": It's not creepy. King's plotting here is as expert and enjoyable as ever, and there are plenty of grisly deaths and occasions for squirming disgust (that alien fungus ...). In fact, King has become so adept at making his good characters likable that the book's inevitable losses strike the reader hard. But the hair on the back of my neck remained serenely in place throughout, whereas, say, that bit with the refrigerator magnets in "Bag of Bones" and pretty much all of "Pet Sematary" (possibly the scariest book I've ever read) had me deliciously spooked.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"