THE OUTSIDER
A gruesome body of evidence
A man’s wrongly accused of murder in Stephen King’s whodunnit with a supernatural twist.
released OUT NOW! 475 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author stephen King Publisher Hodder & stoughton
When one character in The Outsider quotes that famous Sherlock Holmes adage, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,” another retorts, “Wasn’t he the guy who believed in fairies?” And therein lies what’s great and what’s problematic about The Outsider.
Despite dabbling in nonsupernatural thrillers in the past, and basing many of his books around mysteries, Stephen King has never written an out-and-out, procedural-based whodunnit. And, ultimately, he hasn’t here, though for a good long while it seems like he has, with many nods to Agatha Christie along the way. And a fine job he does of it too.
An utterly compelling crime conundrum opens the novel, one with the page-turning urgency of a Dan Brown or a James Patterson. Fine, upstanding teacher, sports coach and family man Terry Maitland is very publicly arrested for the brutal rape and murder of a young boy. The forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts seem watertight when dependable Oklahoma cop Ralph Anderson hauls him in. Unfortunately, it turns out that he has a watertight alibi too: he was 70 miles away at the time of the murder, and there’s local news footage to prove it.
Using multiple viewpoints and transcripts of police interviews, King keeps these early sections utterly engrossing, as conflicting evidence comes thick and fast. Both Terry and Ralph are sympathetic characters, and you find yourself rooting for both, hoping the teacher is innocent but also that the cop hasn’t just ruined his career. The “wrong man” trope is nothing new, but King makes it feel fresh and energised. Sadly, early indications that the novel is going to explore trial by media fall by the wayside (mob hysteria becomes a plot point rather than a theme) but it’s clear King is more concerned with crowdpleasing than issues this time, after the rather worthy-but-dull Sleeping Beauties. To that end he pulls off a completely unexpected turn of events early on that will leave you reeling.
But then… well, as a courtesy, we’ll say “Spoiler warning!”, but we’re talking Stephen King here, so it should come as no surprise that the story takes a supernatural turn. And here the problems begin. Whodunnits by their nature don’t mesh well with the fantastic. The denouement has to be more prosaic than the mystery so that the reader can play along with the investigation. If, however, Miss Marple reveals to the gathering in the drawing room that the vicar was replaced by a killer android double, you’d scream, “But that’s cheating! I could never have guessed that!”
For a whodunnit to incorporate the fantastic, that resolution needs to be particularly clever to be satisfying, but King’s explanation here isn’t particularly original. He creates a decent enough new “monster” with its own unique grisly MO that’d work fine in his usual supernatural thrillers, but feels like an easy get-out clause for a whodunnit. It’s not a debilitating drawback – the book remains perfectly readable and entertaining. It’s just a little disappointing that The Outsiders becomes rather King-by-numbers after such a terrific beginning.
The latter sections of the book are not entirely without surprises. Regular King readers are going to have a pleasant one when a familiar character arrives on the scene. The author’s effortless ability to create colourful ensemble casts and intriguing characters is very much to the fore. There are a couple of good set-pieces, and a memorable appearance from a pissed-off rattlesnake. But you can’t help wondering what might have materialised if King had asked himself, “Does this really need a supernatural twist?” Dave Golder
Has the page-turning urgency of a Dan Brown