| | |  | | Home » The Colorado Kid | | | | | | | Description: | | On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself... | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 267 reviews |
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Average Customer Review:
 ( 267 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 64 found the following review helpful:
 Gets you thinkingJun 20, 2011
By G. Castle
I got this book hoping it would give me some more the back-story to Haven (SyFy show based on book). Well it really didn't help me much there and it wasn't the best story. But I still did enjoy reading it. The only thing I wish was that there might have been a bit more of hints to why the Colorado Kid was in Maine, or even some more theories on why by the characters. I guess that was just left more to the reader though, which is fine by me.
So if you want to get this hoping it will give more info for Haven, you probably won't learn anything of use. If you are looking for a mystery with a solution, you also out of luck. But if you want a shorter mystery story that could leave you thinking of the possibilities, this should be good for you.
59 of 64 found the following review helpful:
A Mystery And A Larger RealizationMar 13, 2007
By Notnadia
As I read this enjoyable page-turner, The Colorado Kid, some sixteen years after opening my first Stephen King book, it occurred to me that King might just be the wisest fiction writer ever to live. Who else delivers so many small, unexpected grains of wisdom in his books? Who else could work so many life lessons into the otherwise limiting genres for which he is best known? And yet King does just that, and he does it every time, The Colorado Kid no exception. I won't point out what I'm talking about, but if anyone who has ever read Stephen King truly stops to think about it, the fact comes clear.
The Colorado Kid is yet another "post-retirement" release from Maine's favorite son. In its fast-moving two-hundred pages the facts of a beguilingly unsolved (there's a hint there for you) mystery is told to an interning journalist (hey, from Cincinnati, no less) by two veteran newsmen, one in his nineties, the other a mere slip of a boy of sixty-five. The story concerns the discovery a generation back, in April 1980, of an unknown and for a time unidentifiable man found dead on a local beach. The body appears to have fallen victim to natural causes, and yet yields no identification, only a handful of clues that set off more questions than answers. The tale---not a story!---of who this man was, where he was from, and why against all logic he came to be alone on a beach in Maine, as well as how he met his most unusual death, is explored by the two old journalists and the intern, and for those learned in the Zen maxim about "the tale being journey sufficient in itself; the end unneeded" The Colorado Kid should be a pleasing read. For others...
15 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 BoringDec 27, 2005
By Christopher Hivner
This is a tedious novel. It's only 180 pages long and I still had to push myself to bother finishing it. This is really nothing more than a short story padded out to short novel length and that's one of its many problems: The central mystery is uninteresting. The way it is written, 2 old men telling the story to a young woman, allows for no real action or confrontation. The 2 old men telling the story are irritating and long-winded, having much difficulty coming to a point, there is no resolution at the end and no point in the story being told. This is not a 'hard-boiled' crime novel as the cover suggests.
I'm not really sure what this book is besides dull. Stephen king is a wonderful writer and it's enticing to see him try a new genre, but if anyone else had written The Colorado Kid, it would not have been published in this series.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Very Stephen KingishDec 03, 2010
By Dolores J. James
"Trivia Fanatic"
Since the show "Haven" first aired I have been trying to find a copy of the story on which it was based. I have to say I was not disappointed. It is as eerie as the show and as with a lot of Mr. King's work, it leaves you with more questions than answers. If you haven't read it or seen "Haven", I heartedly reccommend both. But if you are not a King fan, maybe you won't get it. LOL
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Colorado Kid book ReviewJun 13, 2011
By Joseph Price
I bought this older book since it is the basis for SfFy Chsnnel's "Haven" series. While the TV series is a bit different, and deals with many more mysteries, I found the book was an easy and good read. Steven King's story telling leads the reader just as the two older gentlemen of the local newspaper lead a person in the story as they reveal the details. I was lead to 'discover' certain ideas just before they were revealed in the narrative. This lead me to keep reading, looking for the ending of the tale.
How it differs from the TV series, what happens, how it ends, well, that's up to a reader to discover - the most pleasurable part of it all.
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