Who knows what Stephen King is doing these days? I personally think he is cleaning out his desk drawers, donating his previously unpublishable stories to small, new publishers like Hard Case Crime, using his name to boost their profiles. Nothing wrong with that, if the story is worth reading. I didn’t think this one was. It’s a narrated tale - not my favorite literary device - told by two old coot newspaper owners to their cute, young intern about the unsolved mystery of a man from Colorado who turns up dead on a Maine island beach. The mystery never does get solved, which apparently is the point of the whole thing, but I didn’t get it. It’s more frustrating than entertaining, if you ask me. Also, I couldn’t really see how this story fit into the publisher’s niche of retro hard-boiled crime. Again, I suspect King of cleaning out his desk, rather than writing a good, new tale that works.

I consumed this title as an audiobook, which I have found a nice alternative way to consume some of Stephen King’s shorter works while on longer drives. The audio presentation of this one was well-done. I enjoyed this story. Or then again, it wasn’t really a story. ;)

Not your typical Stephen King. The book was published by Hard Case Crime, which specializes in “hard boiled” detective novels. There isn’t anything hard boiled about this book, but it’s quite an excellent read.

10.2005
4/5 Stars
Stephen King’s take on hard boiled crime. I wouldn’t really consider this a hard boiled crime novel, but it’s a pretty decent take by King on mysteries.

I’d argue that most Stephen King stories aren’t so much about the horror or fantastic elements in the story so much as they’re about how those horrific or fantastic elements affect ordinary people. King’s great strength is taking ordinary characters, developing them a bit and then setting them down in some circumstance and watching how they deal with it. For some like Jack Torrence, they go mad. For others, like Roland the Gunslinger, they become a sort of anti-hero. But in all of these stories, the insanity of the worlds King creates are grounded by characters who feel authentic.

For King, it’s less about the destination and more about the journey. Let’s see how these characters react to things, he seems to say.

Such is the case with his latest novel The Colorado Kid.

Really, to call it a novel is stretching the defintion, especially by the tome sized standard King has set with previous novels. Weighing it at just under 200 pages, this one might be better classified as a novella. Luckily, it’s part of the Hard Case Crime series and is published to increase the visiblity of the line (it helped me with as I’ve read half a dozen of the other books published under this banner). Also, it’s offered at a lower price to the consumer. So, if it only takes you a couple of hours to read, you’re only out six bucks and not the price of a hard-cover.

Now, I will warn you-those of you looking for a neat, tidy little mystery might want to look elsewhere. King acknowledges this in his afterward saying this novel will be one that fans love or hate with little middle ground. And I can see why. The story is one of a dead body discovered on a beach in Maine and how the investigation into solving that mystery affects his family, the people around him and two newspaper reporters who have kept the story to themselves all these years. The story is told by the two guys to a young female reporter so they can share the secret and keep it going. Again, let me say that this is not a neat, tidy package where thing will all be resolved in the end. King offers up some solutions and bits of answers, but there is no great denouncement or a smoking gun. In short-this ain’t an Agatha Christie mystery where the culprit is denounced by the final chapter after a lot of red herrings over the course of the novel.

Instead, what you get is a story of how the mystery affects everyone is comes in contact with. Some are forever changed, some aren’t. And King’s greatest strength-creating intersting characters, whether it be for two pages or 180 plus-is fully on display here. There is little or no supernatural stuff happening here, but instead an interesting little story that is a pleasant way to spend a few hours with a good book.