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Archive for June, 2022

‘The Colorado Kid’ by Stephen King

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , on June 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The Colorado Kid is definitely not your typical Stephen King novel. For a start, it’s not scary, there’s no sci-fi or dystopian element, and there’s nothing supernatural here. It’s pulp fiction and an interesting crime noir.

It opens in 2005, when a young female newspaper intern on a small island in Maine is chatting to her two colleagues, who have lived on the island their whole lives, discussing the subject of local unsolved mysteries. They tell her the story of the man they nicknamed the Colorado Kid, a young man who was found dead on the beach one early morning in 1980. The story revolves not only around identifying the man and finding out how he died, but also what he was doing there in the first place.

Due to the fact that the story is being told 25 years after it happened, there is no sense of urgency or danger, it’s just an interesting story. Although it’s not typical Stephen King fare, you can feel his writing come through – mainly in the description of the small town characters with their quirks and idiosyncrasies, and of course the fact that, like so many of his stories it is set in Maine.

It’s short – coming in at 180 pages, but in reality not even that, as my copy had a long introduction from the publisher, so the story itself actually started around 30 pages in, and there are several full-page illustrations of events throughout the book.

It’s not classic crime and it’s not one of King’s best, but as his books always do, it pulled me in and held my interest throughout. I also really liked the typically pulpy cover picture! Recommended to Stephen King fans as well as those who might not always enjoy his books, but like crime fiction.

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‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ by Joan Lindsay

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on June 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I first read this book when I was a teenager, and if I cast my mind back through the many years that have passed since, I’m fairly sure that at the time I thought it was a true story. It isn’t, but that doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the reading.

The story is, on the face of it, fairly simple. In Victoria, Australia in 1900, the students and two teachers as the prestigious Appleyard School for young ladies are preparing to go for a Valentine’s Day picnic at the famous landmark Hanging Rock. During the picnic, four of the students go off for a walk and only one returns, in a state of hysteria, and unable to recall what has happened to the other three young women. Also missing is one of the teachers.

The book explores the ripple effect of the disappearance and how it changed the lives even of people who were initially only on the periphery of the story, and illustrates how one event can have far reaching consequences. The disappearance itself happens in the first quarter of the book and the rest of the book deals with the after-effects.

I did enjoy this book very much, both times that I read it. There was a surprising amount of humour, or at least acerbic wit, but the main atmosphere is somewhat ethereal and dreamlike. My favourite characters were the coachman Albert Crundall and Madamoiselle De Poitiers, the French teacher who genuinely cared about her students.

It’s a short read (just under 200 pages) but an enjoyable one, and I would recommend it. I’d also like to see Hanging Rock for myself!

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‘Don’t Let Go’ by Michel Bussi

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , on June 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »

This is the first novel I have ever read by French writer Michel Bussi, and it certainly drew me in quickly. It’s a thriller that definitely kept me guessing…

Martial and Liane Bellion are on holiday in the French island of Reunion when Liane goes missing after leaving the hotel pool to go up to their room. All evidence points to Martial having murdered her, and when he goes on the run, an island-wide manhunt is set up by the police in order to catch him. Beyond that it is difficult to say much without giving away spoilers, and this is a book that really deserves to be read spoiler-free.

On the whole I enjoyed it, as the writing was fast-paced and almost every chapter ended in a cliffhanger. The initial mystery was very intriguing and well put together. I also enjoyed reading about Reunion, a place which I admit I had never heard of prior to reading this, but I felt that the island almost became one of the characters in the story.

However, I did not feel that the main characters were particularly well fleshed out; I did like the police officer Christos and his girlfriend Imelda, but other than that the characterisation was thin. Not altogether a bad thing, as this is definitely a plot driven story, but I would have liked to have had someone to really root for.

Although I was absorbed in the story right until the end, I did feel that the ending itself was a bit of a let-down. This is probably because the story had started off and carried along at high-octane pace so the conclusion felt like an anti-climax; just my opinion and I suspect lots of readers will disagree with me.

One thing to note – some of the characters are told in third person and some are told from different characters’ points of view. This wasn’t a problem, and I generally enjoy multiple narrators but some readers may not like it.

Essentially this was a quick and enjoyable read, and I look forward to reading more by Michel Bussi.

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‘The Institute’ by Stephen King

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , on June 7, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Tim Jamieson is an ex-cop on his way to a new life in New York, when he decides to literally go in a different direction and ends up in the small South Carolina town of DuPray and finds himself a job as the local Night Knocker (if you’re wondering what that job is, so was I; I Googled it and all the results were Google searches by other readers of this book! It appears to be a job whereby someone just walks around the town and checks that everything is in order, businesses etc are all locked up and safe – a nightwatchman for the entire town effectively).

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, child prodigy and telekinetic Luke Ellis is kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken to an isolated, secret building in Maine. He wakes up in a bedroom identical to his own at home – except that there is no escape from this institution. He and other remarkable children like him are prisoners here, and the evil director Mrs Sigsby and her sadistic staff are determined to wring every last bit of these children’s special powers for their own purposes. The children who enter the institute never get to leave it – but Luke is determined to escape.

The stage is set for a showdown of humungous proportion…

I generally make a point of reading at least one Stephen King book a year, at least for the last few years. I tend to prefer his later works, and always find myself totally drawn in. The Institute was no different – starting with Tim Jamieson’s story and then moving on to Luke and his fellow captives in the Institute. Inevitably the two stories collide later on in the book, for the thrilling ending.

However, as much as I enjoy Stephen King’s work – I always find that the first 75% of his books are better than the last 25% and I do think that was the case here too. That’s not to say the ending was disappointing – far from it – just that the journey is usually more exciting than the destination. I don’t see how he could have ended this story differently really, but what really drew me in was the all-too-scary vision of life in the institution.

I really liked Tim’s character and also the character of Sheriff John, albeit the latter was not in the story as much as I hoped. The main children in the institute all had their own distinct personalities as well, and it would be difficult not to like and root for Luke.

Overall, a thrilling book which I found hard to put down, and always looked forward to picking up again. Definitely recommended for Stephen King fans and people who like horror or dystopian/speculative fiction.

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