A lot of people hate this book for bullshit reasons. I don't usually comment on other people's opinions (I have in the past, but not often) because its their subjective feelings about the shit they read. Fine. Whatever. But to hate this book because it has a cover that only vaguely touches upon the book and/or doesn't fit the Hard Case Crime series... I don't know... I mean, the book does have a female reporter in it and it is a mystery. Yeah, like I said, those people who hate on this book because of the aforementioned reasons... well, their opinions smell of bullshit. There are plenty of reasons to hate The Colorado Kid. The cover and publisher are the least of them. First off, it's a novella. Charging people $5.99 for a novella is asking a bit much. Even in King Land, where the rides cost more and the endings are sometimes lackluster experiences. Asking six bucks for something that would make a great episode of The Twilight Zone is a dick move. Did the production of this book necessitate the price? More than likely. But my point is this: It shouldn't have been published by itself. It should have been saved for a collection. Same shit goes for Blockade Billy, which is two short stories coming in at 80 pages and published by Cemetery Dance for the fucking insane price of $14.99. (Fun fact: Both Blockade Billy and the short story that follows it, "Mourning", will be featured in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams). At least the coffee table book The Dark Man has pretty artwork one can goggle. So here you have a good reason to hate The Colorado Kid - the price. We got ripped off. Damn fine reason to get upset. Moving on.The selling point here was crime fiction from Stephen King, which had, at this point, already been done. I shall direct you to the short story "The Fifth Quarter" and the novella "Umney's Last Case", just to name two. It's not like this was new territory for King. What fans were expecting was an actual crime drama, not a book of theories. From the jump we're told that there are no answers. Same shit happens in From a Buick 8, but at least The Colorado Kid isn't over 300-pages long. Wait a second... does that make the length and price worth it? No, fucker, because, depending on the version of From a Buick 8 you buy, you're looking at double to triple the price tag of The Colorado Kid, so FUGOFF... Where was I? Oh yeah, expectations. We knew King could write crime fiction when he wanted to, so we were excited. What did we get? Two old men sitting in a room telling a 22-year-old woman a story about a guy that choked on a piece of chewed beef. I hate to repeat myself but... FUGOFF! So the actual story is boring and never really goes anywhere AND we paid six bucks for this book. But why stop there? Let's mention...The afterword. Wait... what? The afterword? Yes, the afterword. Let's mention that King knew that people would hate this book. To be fair and quote him accurately, he says: "Depending on whether you liked or hated The Colorado Kid (I think for many people there'll be no middle ground on this one, and that's fine with me) you have my friend Scott to blame. I included the entire quote, but I want you to focus in on the part within the parentheses. I don't care that King doesn't mind that some people will hate it, but I do care that he knew some people would. My overactive brain can math good so I will put two and two together. Hard Case Crime called and asked King if he wanted to be a part of their newborn pulp throwbacks. He said sure, but had nothing to give them. He could have given them Blaze but that shit needed some modernizing, and well, fuck that noise. He was a busy guy. But wait... what about that trunk story about the unexplained mystery? Some people are going to fucking hate that shit but... oh well, it's not like it's a novel novel, (it's more of an experiment) and I have Cell coming out soon so "YOLO, BITCHES!". So (E. here again) instead of leaving this in a trunk where it wasn't hurting anybody, King decided to give it to Hard Case Crime because he liked the idea of what they were doing. He didn't need the paycheck at this point in his career, but he wanted to be a part of something that was showcasing and paying tribute to his heroes. He's a dork, a nerd, like most of us, and he wanted to be a part of something cool. Do you blame him? Yeah... I kinda do. Dear Stephen King, you could have done better. In summation: The Colorado Kid should have been at the end of Everything's Eventual. Hard Case Crime should've grown a sack (or some ovaries, I don't discriminate) and told King "No. We're not accepting this. We don't want your leftovers and neither do your fans." King would go on to (at least in my eyes) redeem himself by giving Hard Case Crime another novel by the name of Joyland. I accept that as an adequate apology for The Colorado Kid, but this tiny-ass book still grinds my gears.Final Judgment: It should be hated for the right reasons.
Just a few thoughts here about this book...first I listened to the audio version. It was well done and the narrator did a good job. I haven't checked how many pages the text version is, but at just over 3 1/2 hours for the audio version I consider this a short story. So I consider the Audible $21.27 "regular" price and $14.89 member price to be seriously overpriced.The cover pic has absolutely zero to do with the story and implies (to me) a story of a certain flavor and genre which this story does not meet. This is not a detective noir story. There's no sultry redhead. There's no hardboiled detective. Neither the characters or the tale they tell are set in the 30's or 40's. While there is nothing wrong with this cover as a cover, there is a lot wrong with it for this book since it may mislead people into reading it or not reading it assuming it's a different kind of story than it actually is.Instead it's a story set in a small town with two long time residents who also run the town paper. These men have a conversation with a new resident newspaper intern about a mystery and possibly unsolved murder that occurred in the town's past. As has been mentioned in other reviews this story presents a mystery without a resolution. I knew that going in, thankfully, so I wasn't annoyed by it as I would have been if I hadn't expected that. Not only is there no resolution to the mystery, but there aren't really any likely plausibilities presented for what really happened. We get to wonder. We get to think. We get to come up with our own ideas. What we don't get is to know or any real answers.I picked this up because a TV series I've been enjoying, the SciFi Channel's "Haven", states it's based on this story. For others who may be taking a look for that same reason you'll probably want to know that this story has about zero to do with the plot of the TV show. It has two characters in common, and the name of a restaurant. That's it.That being said I did enjoy this story. I think the writing is King outdoing himself. It's better writing than King usually is when at his best. Perhaps because of the short format, the story is tighter and more concise than King usually is. I think typical King novels could be cut by about 1/3. Perhaps also because this is basically a character study, a conversation between three people, two of whom have a fascinating "real life" mystery to tell. And characters are something King does very well.The enjoyment for this one comes from the characters, the way we get a feel for their personalities as the telling of the mystery unfolds, and the interesting mystery itself. This one is about the journey, rather than the destination, and I'm glad I took the diversion.
What do You think about The Colorado Kid (2005)?
Stephen King pulls a fast one with his Pulp-Mystery, The Colorado Kid, dragging the reader into the tale with an intriguing mystery that begs to be solved. A man that no one seems to know is found dead on an island off the coast of Maine, with no identification and sparse clues as to how he came to be there. In typical King fashion, he grounds his story with interesting but believable, hometown characters that could easily be the people next door. However, I had a hard time believing that Stephanie McCann, a University of Ohio student, working as in intern at The Weekly Islander, the small newspaper for Moose-Lookit, the town where the tale takes place, would give up on the life she had known and her husband to be just so she could stay in Moose-Lookit and work for the newspaper. I was also disappointed in the way King ended the story. I know why he did it, especially after reading his notes on the subject, and I think he’s probably right, but I was still disappointed.The Colorado Kid is a good, fast read that I’m sure you will enjoy. – Bob Avey, author of Beneath a Buried House
—Bob
Este libro de King es uno de los más odiados y desvalorados . A la mayoría no les gustó ni un ápice; los decepcionó, para ser más exacto. Tarde o temprano, todo lo viejo vuelve a ser nuevo.Yo no estoy de acuerdo. A mí me parece una buena obra, interesante, diferente, pero en absoluto mala. Es una novela muy corta, para nada pesada ni densa y en ningún momento baja el nivel. Al principio sí tengo que conceder que es un poco tedioso y no sabés bien de qué va. Un poco confuso, quizás. Pero a medida que vas avanzando el libro se vuelve completamente adictivo. En Colorado Kid King explora el misterio en sí. Nos enseña que no todo tiene que resultar como queremos; el autor nos siembra dudas y las deja ahí, en nuestra mente, germinando y desarrollándose, sin final. King nos hace subir a una aventura inconcebible, proponiéndonos sacar nuestras propias conclusiones; no darnos él las respuestas. No todo es fácil, no todo tiene solución, no todo necesita tener un final. Este libro son de aquellos que, aunque no lo quisiéramos, permanece en nuestra mente perturbándonos por un buen tiempo. Nos deja incómodos, con más dudas que certezas. Como ya dije, King no nos da un caso típico de un libro de misterio, sino explora las profundas y oscuras aguas de lo inabordable, del sinsentido.
—Franco Santos
Say "Ayuh" ONE MORE TIME!!!! Grrrr. This is a novel that, as King admits, will divide folks; they love it or hate it. I did not hate it, but I'm not impressed. This is a story of two very old journalists retelling a "weird" incident that happened many years prior. But this novel is not about that mystery or those journalists. It is a novel that is a ruminating on the nature of a news article or a story (in any sense), and what makes a mystery story a mystery. Angela Lansbury and Nero Wolfe are not showing up to help with this one. There is nothing scary or creepy about the mystery in this novel. And maybe it's not even a mystery - the two old journalists (therefore, King) attempt to make the reader care about the incident and turn it into a "thing" when, perhaps, it really just isn't interesting. Bad things happen - and when we cannot trace the line from end back to causes, it jangles people's nerves. Closure is a big part of stories, we are told.But overall, I think this novel is hit or miss. Instead of trying to convince me a mystery exists, instead of describing what makes a story a story, just tell me a story. That's why I read novels - for the story; not so the story can outline what a story would be if it were to be a story. Heh! And if I never read "Ayuh" again, it will be too soon.
—Nawfal
