By Ashdeep Kaur
Stephen King is a household name—and with good reason. Known as the “King of Horror,” his corpus has brought deliciously thrilling tales of terror to decades of readers. King has thrown readers into a plethora of eerie settings from chilling pet cemeteries to haunted hotels through the rapidfire pace of his prose and his utter mastery over tension.
In The Outsider, King transports readers to Flint City, Oklahoma where the body of a child has been found and a police investigation is just at its climax. It’s here that I would like to advise sensitive readers to beware—as with most of King’s work, trigger warnings abound; murder, sexual assault, and graphic violence are discussed in this novel at length. If such content is difficult for you to stomach, it is best to avoid this particular book.
King is well-known for unique and thrilling concepts, stories that at their very core reveal horror as a genre to explore the psychological underpinnings of human behavior and our desire for security. The shapeshifting clown at the center of It that feeds on fear works on the literal level—in that it is literally terrifying—but its defeat in the face of true friendship works on the metaphorical level, also. That is, the uncertainties of life can be handled with the help of loved ones. King tackles such concepts as loneliness and rejection and takes them to a fever pitch through the meandering hallways of an ominous hotel or through the eyes of a psychic teen. However, The Outsider does not center on a single concept, per se. Instead, it zeroes in on a single question: how can a person be in two places at once?
The Flint City police department is certain they have the evidence to convict Terry Maitland for the murder of tee ball player, Frankie Peterson, but the defense has equally compelling evidence of his innocence. Here lies the crux of the novel—swiveling as it does in typical King fashion—from narrator to narrator, from prosecution to defense, from the family of the accused and the family victimized. If all this seems a little too procedural, don’t worry, King doesn’t disappoint when it comes to the supernatural. However, it is my opinion that the meat of the book leans a bit too much on the mundanities of the police investigation and considerably less on the thrilling paranormal aspects of the story that fans have come to expect from King.
One big draw of the book is the inclusion of fan favorite character Holly Gibney, who readers might recognize as the incisive private investigator of King’s Finder’s Keepers. However, she does not make her appearance until more than halfway through the book. Furthermore, readers might feel conflicted about the about-face the novel makes in turning from a straightforward crime story to paranormal mystery. This gives the novel a stark, incohesive quality that is less present in King’s other, more iconic works. Readers might feel the substance of the novel doesn’t really justify its length, or even its more gratuitous elements.
This novel leans more toward slow-burn territory than King’s other books, and readers who appreciate a horror story that moves at a breakneck speed might choose to sit this one out. However, for those of you who are fans of crime stories of all stripes and tales of monstrosity, The Outsider might be the spooky read you’re looking for.
Author Bio
Ashdeep Kaur is a first year creative writing MFA student at Emerson college.
