I think Pet Sematary is Stephen King’s best book. I don’t think it’s his best-written work, though it is perhaps his best-plotted. King is of course known as a horror writer but I think his finest work overall is actually his non-horror bibliography.

All that said, why I think Pet Sematary is King’s best work is because it’s a pure unrelenting tragedy in the Greek sense. It’s relatively simple, it’s focused, and the characters’ flaws and weaknesses collide with an uncaring universe and unutterable forces in dreadful ways.

And the novel has the greatest closing line of any King work, and certainly in the top five or so of any novel ever written by anyone. All of that for me adds up to it being King’s best work, though it’s so dark it could be renamed to Vantablack.