BOOKS: THE OUTSIDER (by Stephen King)

Suffer The Little Children

The Master of Horror Mails Another One In

 By Don Stradley

Stephen King is still at it - his latest horror opus is a 560 pager with references to psychic vampires, Bram Stoker, body snatchers, shape shifters, Edgar Allen Poe, and Mexican superstitions,  not to mention the every day horrors of skin cancer, snake bites, suicide, and the American legal system - but he's lost a bit off his fastball. This isn't a knock on him; like a veteran pitcher, he can still take the mound and get guys out with nothing but junk pitches and guile. In this case, he sets up a plot where a beloved little league coach is arrested for killing and defiling a child, even though there are plenty of witnesses that saw him miles away at the time of the boy's murder. Hell, he's even caught on film at a teacher's conference. Yet, the coach's fingerprints and DNA are all over the murder scene. How could this fellow be in two places at once? That's the premise of The Outsider, a dirge-like police procedural with a few supernatural flourishes. It's not terrible, but King's intriguing set up dissolves into a routine rehash of his favorite tropes; it's old hat. It marches slowly to a dreary, predictable climax. 

Late in The Outsider, we're told: "Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end." In this novel, which seems written with a mini-series in mind, such bromides are dropped by characters with grating  regularity. It's a strange world, we're told over and over again, with all kinds of weird stuff in it. Every character we meet seems to have an eerie story from the past, some unexplained event that still gives them the heebie jeebies. If not, they've seen a weird movie or read a weird story. And of course, there are the skeptics who don't believe such nonsense. Gradually, the non-believers are convinced, and off everyone goes to kill the monster. This is only after a few hundred pages of conversations about DNA samples. King works hard to get his details right, but much of The Outsider reads like a dummy's guide to forensics.

In many ways,  it's the same story King has been writing since The Stand and Salem's Lot and It. There's a creepy villain who does some terrible things, and a bunch of good citizens rally together to track him down. This time, the menace is an otherworldly bogie who can turn itself into anyone, provided it makes some physical contact and draws some blood. He, or it, is a nasty thing, feeding off of pain and sadness, hiding out in caves while it morphs into its next identity. It can project itself into your dreams, or get into your mind, a bit like Freddy Krueger without the lame jokes. He enlists a seedy detective named Jack Hoskins to do his grunt work while he hibernates;  Hoskins is a reasonable version of Renfield doing the bidding of this third rate Dracula wannabe, but it's not enough. The novel is short on chills and long on bum dialog.

King brings back Holly Gibney, a character from his recent novels. She's his Miss Marple, a spinsterish solver of mysteries. Middle-aged, prim, highly medicated, occasionally depressed, Holly appears halfway into the book to assist the band of merry men on the hunt for this evil creature who kills children. She's not King's greatest creation, but her appearance in The Outsider draws attention to the blandness of the other characters. The various Howies and Ralphies who populate the story are interchangeable and forgettable; Holly, at least, has some memorable quirks, whether it's her love of old movies, her loyalty to Walmart, or the way she can make a blackjack out of a sweat sock. From King, one expected more out of these characters and their dark adversary. The good guys sleepily go about their business of finding this demon, and when he's found, he barely puts up a fight. Holly squares off with him at the climax. Yes, scrawny little Holly. It's enough to make you wonder why  King is so smitten with this woman. Is it her underdog quality? Is it her stunted personality? Regardless, not even she can redeem this tired, plodding novel, of which the best writing is reserved for a quick description of one character's sciatic pain, how "it cinched her like a thorny manacle." This bit, which lasts only a few paragraphs, and the poor woman's inability to sleep, was a lot scarier than the stupid spook in the cave.