The Colorado Kid (Hard Case Crime #13) [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues.

But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...?

No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Hard Case Crime series is a wonderful idea: a mix of original and reprinted hard-boiled detective novels by some of the best writers in the field, packaged to look like lurid 1940s and 1950s thrillers. And getting Stephen King to write a new novel as part of the series was quite a coup. King is the author of record when it comes to fiction set in America in recent decades, and here he is with a noir detective story. Alas, what he actually turned in was a cozy, a sort of Jan Karon take on the hard-boiled genre. And at the end, it turns out to be rather arty - if by "arty" you mean "doesn't answer any important questions." Fresh out of journalism school, Stephanie McCann is an intern at a weekly newspaper in an obscure corner off the coast of Maine. She is writing homey features and reporting on trivial stories, but she rather enjoys it. Then a big-city reporter comes to town to gather stories about "unsolved mysteries." The paper's owner and the managing editor send him away unsatisfied, and then tell Stephanie the only real unsolved mystery on the island. The banter between the two old men provides all kinds of local color, but it also means the pace of the storytelling is glacial. It takes most of chapter one to explain why they filch the cash the big-city reporter left to pay for a meal. We're in chapter five before they start telling the story that gives the book its title. Years earlier, two high school sweethearts found a dead body on the beach. There was no identification, and only a few items found with the body gave any hope of telling where he was from. It isn't until too many chapters later, after much meandering, that the old men tell Stephanie (and us) how they found out the man was from Colorado, which led to the identification of the body. Nor do we actually care, since none of the characters do. They're only telling the story in order to explain that it's not a story at all-a conclusion with which readers will heartily agree. The real mystery: why would the editors publish a story that will only frustrate anyone looking for the kind of hard-boiled detective novel they're promised on the cover? Stephen King is a very good writer, so even when telling a non story at elaborate length he is quite readable. I would have enjoyed this piece in a magazine. It's the misleading presentation that will rankle.
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From Bookmarks Magazine

There’s nothing like a good noir crime novel, and The Colorado Kid is nothing like a good noir crime novel. King’s refusal to play by the time-honored rules of the genre exasperated critics, who might have been more forgiving had King delivered a compelling story. The plot, related by two crusty newspapermen entirely in conversation, develops at a glacial pace, and the characters’ exaggerated Yankee accents bog down the dialogue. Granted, the story’s endearing protagonists won over a few reviewers, but even the most generous critics were forced to concede the book’s many flaws.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co.; 1st edition (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843955848
• ISBN-13: 978-0843955842
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.6 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (422 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#12 Overall (See top 100 authors)

#1 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#6 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

#7 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#1 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#6 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

#7 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 129 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Gets you thinking June 20, 2011

By G. Castle

Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I got this book hoping it would give me some more the back-story to Haven (SyFy show based on book). Well it really didn't help me much there and it wasn't the best story. But I still did enjoy reading it. The only thing I wish was that there might have been a bit more of hints to why the Colorado Kid was in Maine, or even some more theories on why by the characters. I guess that was just left more to the reader though, which is fine by me.
So if you want to get this hoping it will give more info for Haven, you probably won't learn anything of use. If you are looking for a mystery with a solution, you also out of luck. But if you want a shorter mystery story that could leave you thinking of the possibilities, this should be good for you.

74 of 81 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Mystery And A Larger Realization March 13, 2007

By Ellie Reasoner

Format:Mass Market Paperback

As I read this enjoyable page-turner, The Colorado Kid, some sixteen years after opening my first Stephen King book, it occurred to me that King might just be the wisest fiction writer ever to live. Who else delivers so many small, unexpected grains of wisdom in his books? Who else could work so many life lessons into the otherwise limiting genres for which he is best known? And yet King does just that, and he does it every time, The Colorado Kid no exception. I won't point out what I'm talking about, but if anyone who has ever read Stephen King truly stops to think about it, the fact comes clear.

The Colorado Kid is yet another "post-retirement" release from Maine's favorite son. In its fast-moving two-hundred pages the facts of a beguilingly unsolved (there's a hint there for you) mystery is told to an interning journalist (hey, from Cincinnati, no less) by two veteran newsmen, one in his nineties, the other a mere slip of a boy of sixty-five. The story concerns the discovery a generation back, in April 1980, of an unknown and for a time unidentifiable man found dead on a local beach. The body appears to have fallen victim to natural causes, and yet yields no identification, only a handful of clues that set off more questions than answers. The tale---not a story!---of who this man was, where he was from, and why against all logic he came to be alone on a beach in Maine, as well as how he met his most unusual death, is explored by the two old journalists and the intern, and for those learned in the Zen maxim about "the tale being journey sufficient in itself; the end unneeded" The Colorado Kid should be a pleasing read. For others...

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Boring December 27, 2005

By Christopher Hivner

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This is a tedious novel. It's only 180 pages long and I still had to push myself to bother finishing it. This is really nothing more than a short story padded out to short novel length and that's one of its many problems: The central mystery is uninteresting. The way it is written, 2 old men telling the story to a young woman, allows for no real action or confrontation. The 2 old men telling the story are irritating and long-winded, having much difficulty coming to a point, there is no resolution at the end and no point in the story being told. This is not a 'hard-boiled' crime novel as the cover suggests.

I'm not really sure what this book is besides dull. Stephen king is a wonderful writer and it's enticing to see him try a new genre, but if anyone else had written The Colorado Kid, it would not have been published in this series.