The Colorado Kid is one of Stephen King’s three entries in the Hard Case Crime series. These Hard Case Crime books are throwbacks to 1950-ish pulpy novels, which at the time they initially came out cost the same as a movie ticket. They even come with the slightly unseemly painted covers of yore. (The HCC books, like the books they’re based on, are roughly the same cost as a movie ticket, which kind of stinks because movies are expensive!!) 
Colorado Kid sounds like it would be a western, or maybe a seedy exploration of what it was like working on a western, but it’s not. Rather, it’s set in 1980s and modern-day Maine. Specifically, a little fishing island. The setting makes sense. It IS Stephen King. He loves main and small towns. But islands are inherently creepy – see also Lucy Foley’s The Guest List or Shutter Island or the recent Netflix series Midnight Mass.
The book is small in scope – two grizzled newspaper men and their young intern spend an afternoon discussing a 1980s story they never made sense of – The Colorado Kid. It’s the nickname the community gave a stranger found dead one the beach at dawn one morning. It seemed to be an accidental death, the body wasn’t identified immediately, the world moved. For most people. But not for the newspaper men and not for the dead stranger.
This is kind of a bizarre book – it’s almost more like a play or an episode of an anthology show like Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone than it is a novel. Maybe True Detective. There are clues, there are theories, but the main thing is the mystery and what mystery does to us. We’re trying to get through the day without staring into the Abyss or wondering what would happen if gravity ceased to exist and we all just floated into the uncaring vacuum of space. Almost Paul Schrader-y.
That’s a very scattered review but perhaps that’s fitting for the book. Hopefully you appreciate the review matching the book. If not, I’ve had the flu so chalk my incoherence up to that, please.
Also worth noting that King wrote three Hard Case Crime books. While I devoured The Colorado Kid, Joyland was my favorite and I enjoyed Later, as well. If you’re only going to read one, read Joyland.
3.5/5
