Summer Reading: The Outsider

I actually started reading The Outsider by Stephen King, the first selection on my summer reading list, last week. I was supposed to be completing the checkout process for the end of the school year but I simply could not put this book down! One of my colleagues started reading it, too, and every time we saw each other we would immediately start discussing it (this even happened at graduation!). I finished it in only a few days because I had to know what happened! A grisly murder of a young boy has sent the small town of Flint City, Oklahoma reeling. Understandably, the police want to solve this murder as quickly as possible. When Detective Ralph Anderson finds multiple witnesses and incontrovertible forensic evidence that points to Terry Maitland, he and District Attorney Bill Samuels decide to arrest the popular teacher and Little League coach very publicly. Despite the fact that Maitland has an iron-clad alibi, the town goes into a frenzy due to the nature of the murder and several tragedies occur. Distraught over the notion that Maitland might have been innocent, Anderson enlists the help of another police detective, Maitland's defense attorney, and a private investigator to determine how one man could be in two places at one time. What they discover is far more sinister than they could have imagined. As you know, I have a love/hate relationship with Stephen King so I tend to judge him more harshly than the rabid fans who gave this book such glowing reviews but, having said that, I really enjoyed this. I found it to be incredibly suspenseful, particularly the police investigation in the first part of the novel. The chapters are short and move from narrator to narrator and this serves to keep you guessing. The action does slow down a bit when they begin hunting the Outsider in earnest (there is a lot of dialogue where characters voice their doubt about what is really happening and it gets a bit tedious) but that didn't stop me from reading into the early morning hours to get to the resolution! I really liked the use of folklore to ground the supernatural aspects of the story and I found the specific legends to be incredibly unsettling. King is the master of writing about ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary situations and this novel is no exception. I particularly enjoyed Holly Gibney.  However, she is a character in the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch) which I have not read. Referencing his other works is one of King's hallmarks but in this instance I found it to be frustrating because it happens frequently and I didn't understand the references. This is nowhere near as good as the classic King novels but it is good enough and I definitely recommend it.

Note:  Have you read The Outsider?  What did you think?