Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Stephen King is so hot that an advance copy of his latest novel, The Colorado Kid, was stolen and sold for $1,623 on eBay.
Aw, c'mon, it's good, but not that good.
King wrote The Colorado Kid for Hard Case Crime, which publishes old and new hard-boiled crime fiction in paperback at a far more affordable price: in this case, $5.99.
The Kid is an intriguing story, but there's really nothing hard-boiled about it. Vince Teague and Dave Bowie, veteran (geezer) editors for the Weekly Islander in Moose-Lookit, Maine, spend a lot of time shooting the breeze, and they recap for summer intern Stephanie McCann the mystery surrounding the death of an anonymous man on one of the island's beaches in 1980.
Incompetent detectives never solved the case, but Bowie and Teague did their own investigation and are happy to speculate about what they don't know for sure.
Be forewarned: Don't expect them to tie everything up in a neat package.
In an afterword, King writes that people will either love the ending or hate it. "I think for many people, there'll be no middle ground on this one, and that's fine with me."
Whether feeling cheated or angry, readers won't be shortchanged.
The characters and dialogue in Kid are wry and lively. The recounting of the man's last days as well as the investigation into his death are artfully detailed.
But speaking of details, here's a note to King: I know this is a work of fiction, but one of your characters refers to a Starbucks in Denver in 1980. A little sleuthing shows the first Starbucks didn't open there until 1992.
The real question may be the identity of the sultry brunette on the book's cover. There's no one like her in the story.
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2004 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
