Richard Bachman
King dedicated Bachman's early books — Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982) — to people close to him. The link between King and his shadow writer was found out after a Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, noted things that seemed the same between the writing styles of King and Bachman. Brown located publisher's records at the Library of Congress which included a document naming King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. Brown wrote to King's publishers with a copy of the papers he found. He asked them what to do. Two weeks later, King telephoned Brown himself. King told Brown that he should write an article about how he found the truth. King let Brown interview him.  At the time of the announcement in 1985, King was working on Misery, which he was going to put out as a Bachman book.