The Colorado Kid

Hard Case Crime publish unashamed pulp novels, some reprints of classics from the 40s and 50s, others, like The Colorado Kid, brand new novels. This one is by Stephen King and it's an undemanding but highly readable little mystery story about an unsolved crime on the little Maine island of Moose-Lookit.

Young intern reporter Stephanie is doing a placement at The Weekly Islander under the wise old eyes of 90 year old Vince Teague and 65 year old managing editor Dave Bowie (no, really). It is these two old men who tell the tale of the body found on the shore back in the 80s. A man with no ID, who had apparently choked to death on a piece of steak. But what seems straightforward is not and there are loose end after loose end left dangling to keep you reading. And you do keep reading. It's a real page turner.

King, master storyteller that he is, based his tale on an event in a news clipping sent to him by a friend. An unsolved mystery that will probably never be solved.

It's a neat little story told in traditional pulp style and well worth a read. These books even have cover paintings by the likes of Glen Orbik and Robert Peak to give them that authentic air. Nicely done.

In the afterword of this novella, Stephen King says that readers are always polarized on The Colorado Kid - either they love it or they hate it - but I'm here to dare saying that he's wrong. For me, the emotions fall somewhere in the middle. Even the two extremes I'm torn between aren't as drastic as love and hate, but rather discontentment and intrigue.

They've coiled together, and I almost feel about this story the way I would feel about my dog when he gets into the trash can, strewing its contents across the kitchen floor. I don't hate him, I'm just disappointed in him, and agitated that I have to expend so much effort to undo what he's done... but equally as eager to watch with rapt amusement as he chases his tail in a wide circle and falls over, leaving the cat to paw at him curiously.

For the most part, I was interested in the storytelling method King chose for this book. Rather than being there in the thick of things, readers hear about the Colorado Kid - who was not at all a kid, given he was forty-something when he died -through two reporters (who were there at the time) sharing the story with their new colleague. In the book's present-day timeline, they're aging men - one in his sixties, and one recently turned ninety - who have all the mannerisms that you'd expect from men that age.

It was a bit much, at times, but honestly fit the setting well enough to not make my brain run screaming in the opposite direction. I'm sure that was helped by the new colleague, Stephanie's, willingness to accept their treatment. Frequent use of pet names like ‘dearheart' and condescension in large doses were much easier to swallow when Stephanie saw them as endearing signs that they'd let her into their inner circle, thus framing it more as well-meaning old-timers who're just set in old habits. (An argument could be made about the author being a man, but I don't care. Let me have this. Let me have my grit without overanalyzing everything!)

The characters, however, felt a bit cardboard at times. I'm still struggling to tell the main men apart despite the gap in their age and slightly different personalities. All I recall strongly is that one of them is inexplicably named David Bowie. Yes, the name felt as hamfisted and confusing as it might if a YA novel had a main character named Justin Timberlake or Mariah Carey. It's just plain weird! Almost as weird as inconsistently (yet frequently) referring to characters by their full names - likely just to have an excuse to keep making this sound like alternate universe fanfic of the musician.

???Lookit him spray those crumbs,??? Vince said. ???You drool at one end of your life and dribble at t???other, my Ma used to say. Go on, Dave, tell on, but do us all a favor and swallow, first.???

Dave did, and followed the swallow with a big gulp of Coke to wash everything down. Stephanie hoped her own digestive system would be up to such challenges when she reached David Bowie???s age.

(...)

???And we got the scoop,??? Vince said. ???In large part because Dave Bowie here bought that young man a doughnut and gave him what money can???t buy: an understanding ear and a little sympathy.???

every single encounter

this

c'mon

why

Was the author just being lazy and trying to create a reference?

but only in retrospect

non-story

has no resolution

ad nauseum

Aha!

I'm not

Mystery is my subject here, and I am aware that many readers will feel cheated, even angry, by my failure to provide a solution to the one posed. Is it because I had no solution to give? The answer is no. Should I have set my wits to work (as Richard Adams puts it in his forenote to Shardik), I could likely have provided half a dozen, three good, two a-country fair, and one fine as paint. I suspect many of you who have read the case know what some or all of them are. But in this one case???this very hard case, if I may be allowed a small pun on the imprint under whose cover the tale lies???I???m really not interested in the solution but in the mystery. Because it was the mystery that kept bringing me back to the story, day after day.

correct solution

the right one

means nothing

actually exist

the mystery is in not knowing, not in there being no actual answer

really happened

should

hadn't

actual

unfinished story

Isn't the point of a mystery to try solving it oneself?

meta knowledge