3 out of 5

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This is really the kind of thing that only a writer of King’s stature would be allowed to get away with – not in terms of the material being edgy, but in that it’s 180 pages of narrational experimentation, fiddling with how to tell a story and why we tell a story.  It’s not uninteresting once it’s understood that that’s the m.o., but it is equally exhaustive as the question becomes – why continue?  And we continue because it’s well written, and because we want to know what our characters will do with the pieces of the story.  Does it belong under Hard Case?  Well, I’m not experienced enough with the writers referenced on the book’s back blurbs to say – I haven’t read Dashiell Hammett or Graham Greene… or King, for that matter, but I trust his position in the world of literature, and trust that he’s read his homework.  There was a reason he had the book published under the imprint, so I can only take it as a lesson (as one of our characters might).  But would anyone else get major press for something like this?  Probably not?

Stephanie, Vince, and Dave (…Bowie) are finishing up lunch at the end of an interview with a reporter from The Boston Globe, who’s trying to track down random mystery gems for a feature in his paper, but has failed to dig up anything from the residents of this coastal Maine town.  When the reporter departs, Stephanie asks her co-workers – as they all work for a local paper, Vince in his 90s and Dave in his 60s having run the thing for 40 years – and so she posits… certainly they’ve seen some kind of mystery during their time, something unsolved, something worth telling.

And indeed they have.  So sit back, Stephanie, reader, while they tell the tell of The Colorado Kid.

The setup is gold.  It’s obvious King loves these characters, as, using his typically easy-to-read but detail-laden style he gets mannerisms and traits down with fun scene setting and observations that are stuffed between the lines.  He allows for the heavy accents of the area via phonetic spellings at moments, which is a little cheap (it works better when he describes how their thick accents sound through Stephanie’s ears), but as it seems to be dropped into the text with less explanation as things go along, it’s possibly another element of the meta text he was going for.  Because our narrators make it clear from the start – this case of The Colorado Kid is an unsolved one, and there’s no easy end around the corner.  And they remind, and they remind, as they start with detailing how the body was found on a beach, and how no one can quite explain why The Kid left work early that morning and then flew or swam across state lines to die in Maine, they remind us, and Stephanie, that there are only questions here, no answers.

Your tolerance for this will determine your enjoyment of the book.  Once you pass about page 60 and the main pitch of the “mystery” has been offered, and the structure starts to take place of Vince and Dave teaching Stephanie how to think through the problem effectively to appreciate just how open-ended it is, you might stop reading.  You might guess that there’s no reveal, there’s no last minute clarity, and that our story isn’t about a crime but about story-telling – what we need to tell ourselves and others to turn the page.  From a distance, I think this was a lot of fun.  The book is short enough and in big type so it wraps up just about when you’re tired of the shtick, but the paced process of peeling away layers of just a simple image – a dead body – to question every detail, every possible why – is fascinating, especially from such an experienced story-teller.  Fascinating from a distance.  It’s pretty whole-hearted, and it would’ve been nice if King actually had made the mystery a bit more mysterious.  He builds mystery into it, which matches the nature of the reporter, digging for a story, and he tries to wrap that into his explanation of the public’s need for a through-line, something to latch on to… thus another layer on top of the story, as we search for whatever we need… but again, you can only have so much patience for cleverness, and I don’t know if it’s clever enough to merit even the relatively short page-length.

So, frankly, I don’t think pulp followers need to read this.  But I’m glad I did.  It’s nice to see the writer working through some thoughts on the page, and I’m glad it was someone with King’s experience, so he can make those thoughts mostly interesting.  But with no real beginning, middle, or end, there’s not a through-line for us to follow, no evolution of the thought – it’s given justification for its presentation by the setup, and then we’re pointed out different parts of the diagram.  The speech was interesting.  I can’t say I learned anything, but it was nice to hear someone talk about it.