REWARD! What is this book?

SCOTCH AND CIGAR
8" x 6"
Oil on Canvas Board
$45

TheWife and I are having diner with Scooter and his wife and kids. We're having a wonderful time. We're having cheese grits and pork, drinking daiquiris, watching the Olympics, and having some great conversation.

In this particular conversation we're comparing Stephen King to Dean Koontz. Turns out we all like both of these authors. We talk about the Tommyknockers and Twilight, The Dead Zone and Strangers, and so many other great novels.

Scooter and I both remember a book, just about at the same time, and we can remember the plot (sort of) but nothing else. We dragged conversation to a crawl while we spent 30 minutes searching the internet for this missing book. We can't remember the author, but we're pretty sure it was King. Yes, it COULD be Koontz.

So, I'm going to give you a very sketchy plot detail and you tell me what book I'm talking about. Your reward will be me buying you a drink. It's been bugging me all weekend. If you don't drink or you're not local then you'll have me undying appreciation...well, undying in that I'll talk about you in the next blog post!

Here goes:

A group of people live in a neighborhood. We meet the people all along the block, including a shady guy who may have a kid, a couple who aren't married and what we think might be a retired/fired cop. And some guy who's a dick. There's always a dick in the group.


These people live happy until some fog or something rolls in and then for some reason they can't seem to leave the neighborhood. They hear no sirens, or traffic from the nearby highway. If they try to leave they just seem to come right back into the neighborhood.


The bad guys seem to be some children's toys that came to life. Cars. I think there were three of them, in different colors. One is black and it has guns and at some point it starts blasting houses and killing folks. The people in the neighborhood ban together and try to escape and/or defeat this evil menace.


Any ideas??? We both remember the book, and we remember in the same way, so we can't be making this up! Who wrote it and what's it called. Figure it out and this will be our relationship next time we meet:




Thank you!

Geraud