The Colorado Kid
by Stephen King
Hard Case Crime imprint of
Dorchester Books, October 2005
Mass Market Paperback, 184pp
ISBN: 0-8439-5584-8
A Review by Gene Stewart
Written to help inaugurate an imprint of new pulp mysteries, The Colorado Kid is a mystery about the nature of mystery. It’s meta-fiction, something more literary than most expect from King, a chronically under-rated and misinterpreted writer due to his amazing sales figures and intense popularity among readers.
Fact is, he’s much better than he’s generally credited to be, a mystery in itself until one remembers the howdy-neighbor narrative tone he achieves. Since he doesn’t come off lofty and cerebral in tone, few pay attention to what he’s really up to, and so they miss how intelligent, well thought-out, and how, yes, literary is much of King’s oeuvre.
He’s like a seamless street illusionist, affable, approachable, and doing so many things you don’t see that you never know what hit you until later, if then. This book brings that lesson home with a snap of the fingers and the dazzle of flash paper.
The Colorado Kid is a nickname given to a dead body found on a beach on an island off Maine. We learn about the incident as two old newspapermen discuss it with a young colleague, an intern who is enticed away from grandiose dreams of journalism by the tiny paper and its place in its tiny community. Along with the story of The Colorado Kid we receive much sidereal education about traditional values, how things really work, and what imposing a narrative means to both storytelling and to reporting.
Many felt cheated or let-down by this book. They thought it had no resolution. They resented not having had their hands held as they crossed dangerous thresholds. They sulked about not having had every little thing explained to them. They accused King of mystification for its own sake, and of being too lazy to work out a solution to the puzzle he poses.
King does not cheat, though. It’s all there, right in front of you, clear as day, if you can manage to think. That’s the true joy of this superb novella, it allows the reader a chance to snap awake to something that goes on all around us all the time.
After reading this, and enjoying it, I went to bed, and it was there that I lay thinking about how King had led me through a discussion of unsolved mysteries and why they appeal to us. What elements they must have if we’re to return to them again and again. Every detail of The Colorado Kid I thought back on fit, I realized, with growing admiration. He’d not only avoided cheating, he’d done sleight-of-mind on me time and again, and had made it look effortless.
What a performance of writerly skills and literary awareness.
Good writing it not just what a writer comes up with but how it’s presented.
In this example, a lesser writer could easily have produced an extruded fiction product mystery novella good for a quick reading and instantly forgotten. It might be expanded into hundreds of pages. It could be compressed into a Jack Ritchie zinger or a sliver of Lawrence Block.
A blurb on the back drop the names of Dashiell Hammett and Graham Greene and specifically mention The Maltese Falcon. At first I thought this was marketer’s razzle-dazzle, chiming on familiar names to sell a product, and sure, some of it is exactly that, but these referents fit well, turns out. Think sharp irony, dangerously unreliable narration, and obliquely blunt fact that goes unrecognized. The Human Factor home to roost with a vengeance.
The stuff dreams are made of, indeed.
We had to pay about five times cover price for this copy I read, and it came with a creased front cover, eye tracks, and so on. If you can find a copy, definitely snag and read it. Well worth the effort and it will, if you’re a canny sort of reader, elevate your appreciation of Stephen King’s work.
/// /// ///
