Autumn's Review: The Outsider by Stephen King

Title:  The Outsider
Author:  Stephen King
Publisher:  Scribner
Publish date:  May 22, 2018

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

All throughout my high school years and then into my early twenties I loved Stephen King.  If he had a new book out, I'd stop everything to read it.  After the last several books (excluding the Bill Hodges Trilogy) I haven't been so keen on reading his books.  They've just gotten to be weird.

This book specifically was so freakin long.  It seemed like great chunks of this book were unnecessary and had little bearing on the story as a whole.    This might be me, but I also had trouble keeping straight the characters.  A name would pop up and I had to really think about who it was and where they fit into the story.  Those seemed to be my two main gripes with this book, but it made it less than enjoyable.  

I listened to the audiobook for this and that was the saving grace that got me all the way through it.  Will Patton is one of my favorite audiobook readers.  Once again he did an awesome job with this book.  

Overall, I think it might be time to break up with Stephen King, but it'll be a hard one.