They move several times to avoid discovery before The Shop catches up to them in New York. Charlie and Andy flee, and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities.

He uses the push to incapacitate The Shop agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. He then uses his push ability to track the trail of Charlie and The Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City, the latest in a series of attempts by The Shop to capture Andy and Charlie following a disastrous raid on the McGee family in suburban Ohio. Andy's and Vicky's powers were physiologically limited in his case, overuse of the push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie developed frighteningly strong pyrokinetic ability.

They both also developed telepathic abilities. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria “Vicky” Tomlinson, minor telekinetic abilities and him a telepathic form of mind control he refers to as 'the push'.

During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with 'Lot 6', a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The book is dedicated to author Shirley Jackson: 'In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice.'Īndrew “Andy” and Charlene 'Charlie' McGee are a father/daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop. In 1984, it was adapted into a film.Ī miniseries follow-up to the film, Firestarter: Rekindled, was released in 2002 on the Sci-Fi Channel and a remake from Blumhouse Productions was released on May 13, 2022. In 1981, Firestarter was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award, Locus Poll Award, and Balrog Award. In July and August 1980, two excerpts from the novel were published in Omni. Firestarter is a science fiction- horror thriller novel by Stephen King, first published in September 1980.

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