The Running Man by Stephen King as Richard Bachman 

This thrill ride is science fiction mixed with horror and will keep you up all night with the adrenaline rush.  It’s set in 2025, and the world has turned into an overtly violent society shrouded in governmental secrets.  Ben Richards is driven to compete on a sadistic reality TV show called The Running Man in an attempt to win money for medicine needed to save his young daughter’s life.  The show centers around Richards trying to escape from a team of Games Network hitmen sent to kill him.  He receives $100 for each hour that he stays alive, but bystanders get money for finding and turning him in, so he must disappear or be murdered.   King wrote this entire book in only a week and the plot barrels along at the same breakneck speed.  Some of the descriptions are pretty brutal and Richards’s hopelessness and desperation just oozes off the pages.  Richards is a smart and angry protagonist that got me really invested in his story and not just swept along with the intense action.  Don’t start this book unless you have all night to finish it because it’s tough to put down!

The Running Man was published in 1982 with the author name Richard Bachman.  It was revealed later that the author was really Stephen King writing under a pseudonym.  King describes his books written as Richard Bachman as having a darker tone and layering humor over a sense of simmering despair.  There is a fascinating essay by King at the beginning of the book that explains his experiences with the Bachman pen name.  The Running Man was also made into an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name in 1987.