Umney's Last Case
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Umney's Last Case (1995) is a short story written by Stephen King and published as a separate booklet as part of Penguin's 60th anniversary. It also appeared in Nightmares & Dreamscapes - a collection King's stories.
The story begins as a Raymond Chandler pastiche, and follows a private investigator named Umney as he goes about what he thinks is just another morning in 1930s Los Angeles. He soon discovers that his life as he knows it is falling apart, and is brooding alone in his office when he receives his final client: the crime-fiction author who created him. Through some unknown means, Umney is forced to trade places with the writer and finds himself in the year 1994, where he assumes his new identity but has the goal of returning to his own universe.The idea of the writer-as-God would be revisited by King in his 2004 novel Song of Susannah.