2005 Hard Case Crime mass-market paperback received in the mail from Brooklyn, New York, USA, through PaperbackSwap. I haven't read Stephen King in a long while, and this one looks like fun. (It also looks like a v. quick read.) Read more at stephenking.com and hardcasecrime.com. (The spine is broken, so I think I'll wild release this one when I'm done. That way potential readers can decide if the condition is acceptable.)

From Library Journal
It may be summer, but school is in for young Stephanie McCann, an intern at the Weekly Islander. Stephanie is working under the wise tutelage of David Bowie, managing editor of the Moose-Lookit Island, Maine, newspaper, and its 90-year-old feature writer, Vince Teague. On a particular August afternoon, in the hours between a lobster roll lunch at the Grey Gull Restaurant and coffee shared amid slanted shafts of late-day sunlight in the Islander's office, the two men recount the tale of a body discovered on Moosie's beach more than 20 years earlier. In the course of their discussion, Dave and Vince bring Stephanie to a new understanding of the words story and mystery. Although the book may not wholly satisfy horror fans or follow the beaten path of pulp crime novels, this slim (by King standards) volume will speak to those who appreciate good storytelling and the chance to spend a relaxing afternoon on a quiet Maine island. Quintessential King; for all popular fiction collections.

From Booklist
King's latest is published by Hard Case Crime, a small imprint hell-bent on bringing the pulps back to life. A contribution from the master of the horrible and fantastic--who clearly read a few paperbacks growing up--makes perfect sense. But oddly, this is less identifiably a genre work than King's other books. It's neither horror nor fantasy, and, despite the title, it's not a western. There are elements of mystery, but what King has written is actually from a much older tradition: the yarn. One afternoon, on a Maine island, two crusty old newspapermen tell a cub reporter about their investigation into the unusual appearance and death of a stranger. Despite the potential pitfalls of writing the whole thing as a conversation (some readers will tire of the oldsters' knee-slapping and folksy expressions), this is powerful storytelling. King appears to be fumbling in his tackle box when, in fact, he's already slipped the hook into our cheeks and is pulling us inexorably toward the bemusing, maddening--let's just say the ending won't appeal to everyone--final page. If it's ironic that King delivered an experiment to people who celebrate the art of formula, that's OK. One of the reasons the pulps remain popular is that, behind those uniformly lurid painted covers, there always lurked a few writerly surprises.

From Publishers Weekly
The Hard Case Crime series is a wonderful idea: a mix of original and reprinted hard-boiled detective novels by some of the best writers in the field, packaged to look like lurid 1940s and 1950s thrillers. And getting Stephen King to write a new novel as part of the series was quite a coup. King is the author of record when it comes to fiction set in America in recent decades, and here he is with a noir detective story. Alas, what he actually turned in was a cozy, a sort of Jan Karon take on the hard-boiled genre. And at the end, it turns out to be rather arty -- if by "arty" you mean "doesn't answer any important questions." Fresh out of journalism school, Stephanie McCann is an intern at a weekly newspaper in an obscure corner off the coast of Maine. She is writing homey features and reporting on trivial stories, but she rather enjoys it. Then a big-city reporter comes to town to gather stories about "unsolved mysteries." The paper's owner and the managing editor send him away unsatisfied, and then tell Stephanie the only real unsolved mystery on the island. The banter between the two old men provides all kinds of local color, but it also means the pace of the storytelling is glacial. It takes most of chapter one to explain why they filch the cash the big-city reporter left to pay for a meal. We're in chapter five before they start telling the story that gives the book its title. Years earlier, two high school sweethearts found a dead body on the beach. There was no identification, and only a few items found with the body gave any hope of telling where he was from. It isn't until too many chapters later, after much meandering, that the old men tell Stephanie (and us) how they found out the man was from Colorado, which led to the identification of the body. Nor do we actually care, since none of the characters do. They're only telling the story in order to explain that it's not a story at all -- a conclusion with which readers will heartily agree. The real mystery: why would the editors publish a story that will only frustrate anyone looking for the kind of hard-boiled detective novel they're promised on the cover? Stephen King is a very good writer, so even when telling a non story at elaborate length he is quite readable. I would have enjoyed this piece in a magazine. It's the misleading presentation that will rankle.

A short story which (like LT's Theory of Pets) doesn't really go anywhere. In the great tradition of the pulps, the cover illustration is way sexier than the story. And I like that one character's name is David Bowie, but no one ever mentions the singer. I picked this book up to wash away the bad taste of a book with thinly drawn characters, and it did the trick.

There's an afterword in which King addresses those who "liked or hated The Colorado Kid (I think for many people there'll be no middle ground on this one, and that's fine with me)." It ends "if you tell me I fell down on the job and didn't tell all of this story there was to tell, I say you're all wrong."

RELEASE NOTES:
This book was released for The Chef's Challenge. (Fish & chips and a piece of steak feature v. prominently in this yarn -- much of which is told in a restaurant.)

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