The Outsider

March 19, 2018
MWA Grand Master King wraps a wild weird tale inside a police procedural in this nicely executed extension of his Bill Hodges detective trilogy (begun with 2014’s Mr. Mercedes). Det. Ralph Anderson of the Flint City, Okla., police force appears to have beloved youth baseball league coach Terry Maitland dead to rights when he publicly arrests him for the grisly murder of an 11-year-old boy, since the crime scene is covered with Terry’s
fingerprints and DNA. Only one problem: at the time of the murder Terry was attending a teachers’ conference in a distant city, where he was caught clearly on videotape. The case’s contradictory evidence compels Anderson and officials associated with it to team up with Holly Gibney (the deceased Hodges’s former assistant) to solve it. What begins as a manhunt for an unlikely doppelgänger takes an uncanny turn into the supernatural. King’s skillful use of criminal forensics helps to ground his tale in a believable clinical reality where the horrors stand out in sharp relief. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff & Verrill.

Narrator Will Patton turns this story into an audio blockbuster. Early on, Patton sounds like he's reading a police procedural. He uses a terse, confident voice to portray Detective Ralph Anderson, a no-nonsense meat-and-potatoes type who'd never consider a supernatural explanation for a baffling case. But Ralph's worldview expands as he digs deeper into the brutal murder of 11-year-old Frank Peterson. When Holly Gibney, the troubled sidekick turned ace private investigator from Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy, enters the story, Patton gives her a halting speech pattern and falsetto voice. Holly's unique sound and open-mindedness effectively contrast with the decent but sometimes hardheaded men surrounding her. King's usual sprawling cast of characters is also present, and suffice it to say that Patton does them all justice. A.T.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 25, 2018
Reader Patton’s steady, realistic narration adds a strong element of credibility to King’s supernatural police procedural, in which a small-town detective is faced with an apparently impossible crime. The worst day in the life of Flint City, Okla., detective Ralph Anderson is when he arrests popular Little League baseball coach Terry Maitland for the murder of a young boy. The coach’s fingerprints and DNA are all over the crime scene, but he has an ironclad alibi: he was at a convention in another city and has witnesses and even video footage to prove it. Subsequent events suggest the presence of an otherworldly serial killer whom Anderson and his associates set out to find and destroy. Joining them is Holly Gibney, a fascinating character from the author’s Bill Hodges crime trilogy. Brilliantly deductive, neurotic, and obsessively determined, she quickly takes over the novel, and Patton provides her with an edgy, breathless, and impatient voice that, at times, is an almost crooning stream-of-consciousness. Patton’s approach for Anderson and his other associates is more conventional: they speak in fittingly tough, hardboiled tones. As for the voice of the monstrous outsider, it is surprisingly conversational and educated, with just a hint of chilling playfulness. This audiobook demonstrates King’s ability to make even the most fantastic story believable and poignant, and Patton’s unswerving talent for making fiction feel real. A Scribner hardcover.