In 2004 the creators of the yet-to-appear Hard Case Crime imprint wrote to the greatest living US writer to see if he would be interested in maybe a couple of quotes for their noir reprints. The reply came from King's agent. Would they like to publish his short mystery novella The Colorado Kid? Oh yes they would, and publishing a major writer - as major as it is possible to get - gave Hard Case instant credibility. King continues to publish with them. Joyland is reviewed on this blog and Later sits on my to-be-read pile.
Mine is the 2019 reprint, which includes Charles Ardai's introduction, which is great, and illustrations which are variable. The story itself ... I called it a novella above, because of its length, but in tone it is a long short story. It is essentially an account of a 25-year-old mystery (thus set in 1980) told by two old geezers who run a smalltown newspaper in Maine to their twenty-year-opd summer intern. Back in 1980 two teenage runners found the body of a forty-year-old man lying on the beach. Naturally this drew the attention of the then middleaged newsmen. The police weren't interested as there was no obvious foul play involved - the man died because some steak got stuck in his gullet. But other elements of the case intrigued the journos. Why did the man carry no wallet, no ID?
Eventually another intern, who was working with the police back in 1980, comes up with a clue to the man's identity, which only reveals more odd facts.
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