A Quick Read

Just Finished Reading: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

I don't think I've done that since college. Just finished a book in 2 days. Well no, that's not entirely true. There was a stretch a while back when I actually made it through a book in one DAY but it wasn't a particularly difficult book and I finished it so quick more because I wanted closure on the story (which was pretty weak).

This was no great feat. The Colorado Kid isn't a very long book. At 178 pages, it's really more of a novella. But it sure does hold your attention if you like reading mysteries.

I started reading it last night. Had more than half of it read by the time I went to bed. I probably would have stayed up and finshed it but it was getting pretty late and it's never a good idea to read mysteries when you're tired. You miss things and that can make solving the mystery impossible.

I finished it a few minutes ago. It's a great read, even if it is a short one. It's the sort of thing I wish King would do more often. There are no monsters in this one, no ghosts, no aliens. So if you like that aspect of Stephen King stories, it'd be better to just leave this one on the shelf. But if you like a good mystery, and you don't require your novels to be a certain length, pick it up.

Now, if you want to know the ending, you'll have to highlight the big empty space. I'll tell you all about it, but I'm going to color the text white so it won't show up unless you want it to. To read the rest, just use your mouse, hold down the left button and drag the cursor over the next section.

The book starts off pretty simple. You've got two old newspaper men and their intern finishing off lunch. They just had a meeting with a reporter from the Boston Globe who's looking for "unsolved mysteries" in the area. This leads to a long conversation regarding a mysery the two old men DIDN'T tell the reporter. It's the mystery of the Colorado kid.

I'd LOVE to tell you who done it but I can't. In fact, no one can. It's one of the things I kinda like about the story. There's no ending. They never solved it. Dead guy is found on a beach. Lots of little clues but none of them lead anywhere. It's a year and a half before they even ID him and that raises more questions than it answers. Even after you find out who this guy was you never find out enough to figure out what happened.

King, himself says in the afterward that you could come up with a dozen different possible ways end the story. Some would be good, some would be bad. He left it open anyway because, as he sees it, solving the mystery isn't the big deal. The big deal is the mystery itself and the characters trying to uncover it. And he's right. When you read a mystery novel, after the first few plot twists, you don't really care about the actual solution. You care more about the detective or the doctor or the reporter trying to REACH the solution. Besides, let's face it, we've all read mysteries that left us a bit underwhelmed when we got to the last page.

So there you go, my take on The Colorado Kid. Your choice to read or not the same way it's your choice to read my thoughts on it :-)

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