I have an on-off relationship with the works of Stephen King. When he’s on fire (Misery, It, The Shining, The Dead Zone) there is no one to beat him. When he’s mediocre (The Dark Half, Insomnia, Rose Madder) he’s still more readable than a great number of authors. But when he’s bad (Cujo, From a Buick 8, Desparation, Dreamcatcher) he’s almost insufferable. King is a writer who was unafraid to take chances with his image, his prose, his technique. Recently, there has been a feeling like he’s coasting with some of his work rehashing images and themes and techniques from earlier work (From a Buick Eight springs to mind) to poor effect and his involvement in some very poor television projects (The terrible Shining miniseries, the initially intriguing but ultimately empty Kingdom Hospital) has been often disappointing. But again, he’s had so many strikes in his long career you expect periods like this. Of course, between all of this he’s been capping off the excellent Dark Tower series so one suspects his energies were directed elsewhere. Nobody, after all, is perfect and like I say when King’s on fire, no one can beat him.

The Colorado Kid seems like a chance for King to recharge his batteries after the end of the Dark Tower epic. Working in a genre with which he is not usually associated (crime fiction) and being forced by the nature of the imprint (Hard Case Crime) to keep it short (something King often has great difficulty in doing) could be a great opportunity for King to surprise us all – something those of us who have been following his career know he often does when you least expect it. And in the end King does surprise us, but one is left wondering whether it is the right kind of surprise he delivers.

The Colorado Kid is going to frustrate a lot of people. The cover promises its going to be an exploration into the nature of mystery. The dedication is to “the hardest of the hardboiled”. But ultimately, it feels less like an exploration of mystery than a lecture upon it and the hardboiled expectations of the dedication are ultimately undelivered.

Set on a small island, it sees two old newspaper pros relating an unsolved mystery to a junior reporter who’s recently joined their ranks. King has previously given us this form of narrative in a slightly different fashion with Dolores Claiborne (where Dolores relates her story to the local cops) and we know that King has it in him to illuminate both the “present” of the story and the past being related through the telling of the old guys’ tale. Unfortunately, King ends up doing neither. His prose feels stilted and old-fashioned in a very conscious fashion, drawing attention to itself and ultimately distracting the reader from its purpose. He consistently tells instead of showing us the character of these two old men. And even more frustratingly he finds it necessary to insert discourses on the Maine dialect that has popped up time and again in his books. We know all of this by now if we’ve been reading his books and even if not we can pick up the meaning of certain words (I’m thinking the ol’ Maine standby of “Ayuh” that gets several paragraphs) from their surrounding context. King’s prose feels more like unnecessary author intrusion (something King has done on frequent occasions to varying degrees of success) than ever before and soon distracts us from the main action. More unnecessary author intrusion comes from King’s odd choice of character names (The name “Dave Bowie” for instance pulled me right out of the narrative) which often seem to have little or no significance. Of course this may be precisely the point, one suspects on reading the afterword. But all the same one shouldn’t need an afterword to point out why we should have “got” a novel.

For all of this, though, the setup is intriguing enough to keep the reader moving through. At first you hope there is a point to all this setup and the characters’ initial discussion of unexplained mysteries is intriguing, enough to keep you ploughing ahead. And its just as well King keeps this up because in the end, King’s plot is ultimately slight and the story is only held together by promises which the story may or may not keep.

It is hard to properly discuss the feeling one gets upon completion of The Colorado Kid without spoiling the surprise for the reader, but King’s afterword nails it on the head when he claims that some people are going to be turned off by the book and some will get exactly what he’s trying to do. For most people it will be a love it or hate it affair. Some of King’s more traditional fans will undoubtedly be upset and many hardboiled crime fans are going to be perturbed by the story King chooses to tell here. But ultimately what left me vaguely disappointed was the need for the author to come out at the end and explain it all to us as though we were children. The point – which this reader felt to be explicit in the very nature of the ending – is rammed down our throats by King and leaves us wondering just how much faith he has in his readership. One feels he could continue his thematic discussion easily without having to “apologise” for his choice of theme (and despite his protestations it does feel like an apology). This adds to the general air of self-consciousness that ultimately is what weakens the novel.

None of which is to say that the novel is without merit. The setup and structure are intriguing and ultimately King pulls you through his story with ease. After all, King’s strength as a writer is to often make the reader ask, “Well, what happened next?” It’s a pity that he couldn’t do so with more grace on this occasion and with less self-consciousness to his tale. The problems remind me of the movie, Scream. With its self-aware narrative and tricksy structure as well as its somewhat surprising denouement, the Colorado Kid tries to be too smart for its own good. While it has its moments of intrigue and, ultimately, it really does have a lot to say about mystery, it feels at once too full of incidental moments and too empty of real importance. The parts are ultimately more than the whole and in a novel, it really should be the other way round.

King has attempted a bold experiment here and while there are many things to recommend Colorado Kid – the easygoing narrative, the camaraderie between the news room folks, the moments when King really has something to say about mystery – it feels among the weakest of Hard Case’s lineup. That said, it’s better than a lot of other books being released in the mystery genre and much of the disappointment comes from your expectations concerning both the King and the Hard Case brands. I have a feeling whether you enjoy the book or not depends entirely on what you bring with you to it.

For the Crime Scene record, however, file this one under brave, intriguing and initially promising, but ultimately disappointing. Not that it’s a terrible or even bad book, but just that for all the promise and intent, one gets the feeling that something’s missing from this book and its not what King’s afterword claims to be missing, either.