Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
King has really done something interesting here, 27 Dec 2005
I would say that Stephen King has earned his wily old codger wings with the publication of this Hard Case Crime novel. The Colorado Kid is unlike anything King has done before. For starters, this King fan didn't even know about this little red book until after it was published. It doesn't even look like a Stephen King novel, with its nour-ish cover and provocative tease line. It didn't read like Stephen King, either – not the first chapter anyway. My first impressions were in no way encouraging. When King starts telling the story of the mystery, though, I was intrigued – so much so that I didn't put the book down until I had finished it. I can't say I'm a big fan of the ending, but I don't have a problem with it either. King does an eloquent job of explaining what he has done here in the Afterword. There, he admits that readers will most likely either love or hate the book – and I think he's right, at least to a degree. As intrigued as I was by the story, I can't say I love it, just because of that ending. Those who criticize The Colorado Kid, though, have legitimate reasons for doing so.The Colorado Kid is the initial moniker given to a middle-aged man who turned up dead on the beach of Moose-Lookit Island (off the Maine coast) back in 1980 – just another John Doe to the local cops. He would never have been identified without the help of the two old men running The Weekly Islander; they did more investigating than anyone with a badge ever did. Over the courser of a quarter of a century, they've returned time and again to the mysterious death of this stranger on their little island. They've turned up a number of facts about the dead man, every one of which only seemed to deepen and complicate the whole picture of who this man was and how he came to die there on a beach far away from his home in Colorado. In these pages, the two old newspaper men tell the story of The Colorado Kid to Stephanie, a young intern there at The Weekly Islander. It's a rite of passage in a way, showing the young lady she has been fully accepted into the local island family. It lets the two vets test their young charge while also providing her with important insights into the twin arts of journalism and storytelling. I found myself just as intrigued as Stephanie with the increasingly confusing depth of the mystery; like her, I wanted a solution to clear up all of the confusing facts. And there we have the proverbial rub. Most likely, hard-boiled crime story enthusiasts will have more problems than Stephen King fans with The Colorado Kid – although a right many of King's most loyal subjects may well balk at what the master has done in this odd endeavor off the beaten path. As long as I was flipping the pages, though, I was fully engrossed in the story – it's not vintage Stephen King storytelling, but it's pretty darn good. The trouble only comes at the end, as it's a bit of a let-down. King's Afterword, though, puts everything into perspective and changes your viewpoint of the entire story – it's the saving grace that allowed this loyal King fan to really appreciate The Colorado Kid for what it is.
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Try this if you don't usually like Stephen King, 10 April 2006
I really enjoyed this little novella.In one way it isn't typical Stephen King fare. There's no real horror and it's just two old codgers telling a mystery story to a young woman. I thought the old codgers though were very typical Stephen King characters, entertaining crafty old men with a good story to tell. King is often underrated. Because of the horror focus of his work, his feel for storytelling and character is ignored. Hopefully this story will go some way towards redressing the balance. Well worth reading, and well worth trying if you haven't particularly liked King's writing in the past.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
True Pulp Fiction or not? But does it matter?, 31 Aug 2006
In every book and movie of one of his books, Stephen King's strength is more within his characters than the storyline. The storylines, however, are usually meaningful and touch the heart, and he has a way of tapping into obvious themes which we kick ourselves, (and probably other authors do, too), for not thinking about such a simple idea ourselves. Much as The Colarado Kid is a great and fascinating read where King has drawn beautiful characters yet again, this story, even though well worth reading, is not truly of the pulp fiction genre. Publishers, Hard Case Crime, were obviously thrilled when Stephen King sent them the manuscript, but had it been written by any other author I feel it would have been rejected for being way-off-target. However, it heightened HCC's profile and is a feather in their cap as King simply sent them the script out of the blue. For the true King fan this is a must, and it's an interesting read even if you're just a casual reader of this genre, but the pulp fictionalised gung-ho characteristics of bullets bouncing off the main character are missing, but Stephen King is a law unto himself and does whatever he wishes with his audience loving it. The characters, flawless, the story, not truly pulp fiction in the strictest sense.
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