It's been a long time since I read an early King novel, and I'd almost forgotten how great he was in his peak cocaine era. He's still good now, but the books he produced in the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s have an energy that's completely unmatched. Where Rage didn't really read like a Stephen King book, Roadwork is so obviously King that I'm not at all surprised someone figured out that Richard Bachman was a pseudonym. 

King is the "master of horror" but I've always thought that really he's a thriller writer more than anything else, and Roadwork is a perfect example of that. This is a pure thriller with no horror element, and it's fantastic. It's very grounded in its time while still feeling modern - the tensions around unchecked capitalism, about the everyday person feeling crushed under the unstoppable onslaught of industry and government, are very well realised and feel a lot like Network (1976), but they also still resonate today. There's some weird horniness going on in here but I think that's just the '80s more than anything else.

Loved this, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it.