Let me start this review with an apology. I’m not going to be able to review this book properly without using some pretty hefty spoilers, and for that I’m sorry. The Outsider triggered a lot of emotions, some good, so not so. In many ways the latest novel by Horror Master Stephen King was the perfect book to review, it offered a lot of food for thought, it was also anything but perfect.
Stephen King: The Outsider (Kendall Review with spoilers)
An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.
An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.
As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
At its heart, The Outsider is a crime/mystery novel, and a quite brilliant one at that. I won’t go into plot details as the synopsis does a great job and for 244 pages King had me in the palm of his hand. I used to find King too wordy, here the writing is much more concise whilst retaining his usual eloquence. I was genuinely puzzled as to how the case would be resolved, the case for and against Maitland were seemingly watertight. Unusually, the story was so good, I purposely read slower than I normally would. I wanted to savour every word, gorgeous sentences and plot twists. I reread multiple passages, this was story telling on a different level. And then we hit page 247…
We are now at the point in the story where a new character is introduced, Holly Gibney. Constant Readers will already know Holly from the Bill Hodges Trilogy and it’s very clear that King loves her. She pops off the page and is a joy to read. She also manages to convince a room full of intelligent, law and police officials that what they are looking for is a shape shifting creature of Mexican folklore with nary a question. This immediately took me out of the book. Too many characters were taken into the final third of the book, and all of them were happy to accept the genre shift. As the reader, I was expecting a turn to the supernatural, I really couldn’t see how King could resolve the case traditionally (I’m a little disappointed he didn’t to be fair). I felt that King mishandled the reveal horribly. Am I being too fussy? I don’t think so, especially as two characters in the know die as we enter the final chapters with hardly a contribution to the story once the shift occurs. The fewer people to know the truth about The Outsider the better for me, right from the off it should only be Ralph, Holly and Yune that ventured to the Marysville Hole for the finale.
It’s easy to be so critical about the book from the genre shift onwards as everything that went before it was brilliant. Easily the best thing I’ve read this year. Well written, plotted and utterly enthralling. I enjoyed the latter half of the book but it felt somewhat half-baked compared to what went before. I wouldn’t be surprised if it transpires The Outsider was originally two separate stories that King blended together. The finale itself was so disappointing I half expected Shaggy, Scooby and the gang to turn up to remove the villain’s mask.
To finish, my negativity is nothing to do with the genre shift, it’s about how it was handled and the subsequent deterioration of quality of the story from there on.
Star Rating (out of 5): 3***
An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.
An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.
As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
You can buy The Outsider from Amazon UK & Amazon US
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