Book #198 of 2018:

The Outsider by Stephen King

Stephen King’s latest novel is also his best work in years (since 11/22/63 in 2011, in my opinion). It’s a compulsively readable mystery-thriller with an irresistible premise: a man is arrested for the horrific rape and murder of a young boy, with irrefutable eyewitness, fingerprint, and DNA evidence linking him to the scene. But he insists that he didn’t do it, and offers up an alibi with its own airtight corroboration. Each version of events seems as though it must be true, but both versions can’t be.

For the first half of this story, King explores with great nuance the ramifications of the case and the doubts that creep into this small town. Is an innocent family man being framed, or has he hidden his true nature and somehow pulled off the perfect crime? I raced through these pages, and was expecting to ultimately award the book 5 stars. Two developments in the back half, however, dampened my enjoyment substantially. Minor spoilers ahead.

First, it turns out that this is a spinoff sequel to the author’s earlier Bill Hodges trilogy, which I’ve liked but never loved. You won’t be lost if you haven’t read those detective novels first, but The Outsider does give away their ending, and it’s a little frustrating that it hasn’t been clearly advertised as a follow-up. More importantly, the paradox posed by the novel’s setup is ultimately given a supernatural solution, and the story’s climax devolves into some standard King monster-hunting.

This part of the book is fine, but it’s nowhere near as strong as the beginning. In fact, it sort of reads as though King, who famously doesn’t plot out his stories ahead of time, wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t think how else to resolve the matter. I almost wish he had instead left the solution ambiguous, as he did in his cold-case novella The Colorado Kid. That would have been a bolder writing choice, more in line with the excellence of this novel’s early chapters.

★★★★☆

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