When you’re as big a name as Stephen King, they really will just let you publish anything. The Colorado Kid is purportedly a mystery novel, but it determinedly disavows the conventions of the genre. What it actually is, is a tease.
The novel takes the format of a conversation between two old newspaper hands at a local weekly paper on an island off Maine and their young female intern. They’ve just dispatched a nosy Boston Globe reporter who was looking for fodder for some kind of “Unexplained Mysteries of New England” feature. When Stephanie, the intern, expresses surprise that her two companions didn’t have a good story to share, they reveal the one they kept to themselves: The Colorado Kid.
In actuality, the Colorado Kid is an unidentified body found on the beach by two local high-school kids out for a morning jog. Dressed in business clothes but without wallet or ID, he seems to have choked on a piece of meat found lodged in his throat. No real mystery there, then, right?
Except, why is there a pack of cigarettes in his pocket with a Colorado sales stamp? Especially when the autopsy makes clear he never smoked in his life. Why is there a Russian coin in his pocket? Why wasn’t he wearing a coat on a cold morning? And most importantly, why on Earth was he there in the first place?
It’s an intriguing set-up to be sure. But as the pages dwindle in this very brief novel, the growing awareness that there will be no satisfying resolution sinks in. See, this is one of those “the mystery is the point, not the solution” stories. Which, frankly, feels like a handy excuse for not finishing your work.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. I was aware going in that this wasn’t a conventional mystery. Still, as a reader you get used to stories having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Maybe real life doesn’t work that, but I’m not looking for real life when I settle in with a book.