The Colorado Kid - Stephen King

 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.

Joyland - Stephen King

 It's the summer of '73 and student Devin Jones has taken a seasonal job at an old-fashioned funfair in North Carolina.  Dev has just been dumped by his steady girlfriend and throws himself into the life of a greenhorn carny.  But the House of Horror ride was the scene of a mystery death and homes, according to those with a psychic bent, a real horror.

It must have been around the mid-70s when I picked up King's debut novel Carrie.  For the next twenty years I read pretty much every one as it came out.  But IT kind of lost me and I hated the collaboration with Peter Straub - The Talisman, was it?  I think Dolores Claiborne (1992) was the last one I bought.  But I am a real fan of Hard Case Crime publications and when I realised that the soon-to-arrive Later was the third of three written specifically for HCC, I had to get one.

Joyland (2013) is the second of the three (the first is The Colorado Kid (2005)).  I romped through it.  King's plots got a little samey back in the day but the writing never paled.  He started as a writer pushing the envelope and has matured over forty-plus years into probably the best living writer of popular fiction.  The key is, he has never become small-minded or - despite his phenomenal sales and big-budget movie adaptations - in anyway arrogant.  He sets out to intrigue and entertain and he delivers every time.

In summary, Joyland is a coming-of-age story with an overarching mystery and a couple of substantial jolts of horror.  Because it is short - and King is the absolute master of the shorter form - it bowls along merrily right to the end.  It looks like I have some catching up with King to do.  I was always going to get Later when it comes out in the UK.  Looks like I might need to tide myself over with The Colorado Kid.