The Outsider by Stephen King - Terrifying Villain Or Lazy Cop-Out?
Description
Title - The Outsider
Author - Stephen King
Publication - May 22nd, 2018 by Scribner
Genre - Thriller, Horror, Supernatural
Pages - 561
Rating - ★★☆/5
Review
“It was no dream she said. Dreams fade. Reality doesn't.”
My
experience with Stephen King never seems to match up to my expectations. Maybe
I always pick the wrong books to read, or maybe my personal preferences don't
gel well with King's style. Whatever may be the reason, this particular book
was not a very rewarding read for me.
This seems to be a highly unpopular opinion, but for me, the second half of the
book was as disappointing as the first half was gripping. Why am I breaking
this book into two parts like this, you ask? That's because I honestly felt
like I was reading two different books. It was like one of those films that
keep building up your expectations in the first half, but everything goes
totally downhill after the interval.
The book
started as a chilling, bite-your-nails, pull-your-hair, stay-up-til-4 am kind
of thriller. A horrific sexual abuse & murder of a child takes place. All the
evidence found points to Terry Maitland, local teacher, and football coach, a devoted husband, and father -- a man no one could have ever imagined would do something like this.
After much deliberation on the part of Ralph Anderson, our lead detective, Terry is arrested. Only, he has an ironclad
alibi that the police never bothered to check, and for every piece of evidence
that incriminates him, there seems to be another that proves his innocence.
It's the holy grail of murder-mystery thrillers. A seemingly impossible murder.
After all, how can a person be in two places at the same time!!
''There was one rock-hard fact, as unassailable as gravity: a man could not be in two places at the same time.''
This first half of the book kept me horrified and yet enthralled, puzzling over all
the possibilities and I kept waiting for some bombastic twist to drop and
shock the living h*ll out of me. And then came the answer, which I can only
describe as a lazy cop-out, for the lack of better phrasing.
Paranormal
thrillers can be immensely intriguing when done well, and King is the master of
that particular subgenre. However, this book was a let-down for me because it was marketed as a suspense thriller, not a supernatural horror, and the
first half made absolutely no reference to anything supernatural, no
foreshadowing, no clues, nada.
King builds up the
tension with an intriguing mix of clues and witnesses that both absolutely
prove that Terry must be the culprit while also making it utterly impossible
for him to have done it. It plays out like a realist thriller where all the
seemingly impossible mysteries will eventually be found to have some ingenious
tricks and masterful planning behind them, only to have King tell me,
"welp, it's basically a shapeshifting monster that can also clone
fingerprints and DNA with its evil superpowers and stuff. That's it."
I mean, don't get me
wrong, the idea of the existence of such a creature that can commit such
horrible acts and ruin lives without ever leaving behind a trace is truly
terrifying. But if that is the case, I would rather have the Winchester
brothers solve the case. At least we would get to experience their special
brand of witticism alongside a successful and satisfying hunt for the monster.
At one point in the
book, King manages to work in the famous Sherlockian quote :
“Once you eliminate
the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the
truth. ” Except in the Holmes
Mysteries, the solutions, however mindboggling, are always rooted in reality.
Here, it's a supernatural creature that can commit murders and fake pieces of evidence without working up a sweat. It might make for a terrifying monster, but it doesn't
make for an interesting enough villain.
This book could have
been three things:- 1) a police investigation grounded in reality 2) a
paranormal thriller 3) a whacky mix of investigation and the supernatural. But this book was none of these. The first
half teases the existence of some Agatha-Christi-esque solution to this puzzle, only
to have the supernatural stuff explain it all away.
It might sound
presumptuous, but I felt that the author had worked himself in a bind that he
couldn't find a way out of, this perfect crime that he cooked up but couldn't
find any way to resolve it realistically, so BAM! He dropped in a random
paranormal creature to tie all the itty-bitty loose ends together and save
himself the pain of having to actually work out the logistics of this
"perfect crime".
Verdict
In conclusion, I
would like to give this book 2.5 dim stars & the phone number of Dean
Winchester cause god knows they need it.
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