An eleven-year-old boy is found in a town park, hideously assaulted and murdered. The fingerprints (and later DNA) are unmistakably those of the town's most popular baseball coach, Terry Maitland, a man of impeccable reputation, with a wife and two daughters. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland coached, orders an immediate and public arrest. Maitland is taken to jail, his claim to innocence scorned. Maitland has a foolproof alibi, with footage to prove that he was in another city when the crime was committed. But that doesn't save him either.
King constructs a propulsive plot, and a race against time to uncover the identity of a terrifying and diabolical killer who has left victims-and "perpetrators"-across the country, and who is on his way to his next horrific act.
King's psychological suspense is at its most riveting in this extraordinarily dramatic and eerie story. He is devastatingly vivid on the experience of being falsely blamed-the effect on the accused, the spouse, the children; the suspicion of friends, even the most loyal; the impossibility of ever being innocent again (if you are lucky enough to live). He is also masterful at showing us that supernatural monsters are startlingly like human beings who do monstrous things.
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[It was an unmarked car, just some nondescript American sedan a few years old, but the blackwall tires and the three men inside gave it away for what it was] ***(Hodder & Stoughton, 22 May 2018, 477 pages, hardback, bought from Amazon)
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After my lacklustre impression of King's last novel, Sleeping Beauties I was half-looking forward to and half-dreading The Outsider. Thankfully King is on top form in this unsettling suspense novel with an overture of the supernatural. A character from the Bill Hodges trilogy also puts in an appearance. Maybe this will be a recurring feature? Many of King's earlier novels had these sort of links, some even more subtle unless you were a True Fan (dear reader, I am). So anyway, The Outsider rocked and even scared me a little. I've never had a cantaloupe melon and after certain events in this book I never will. Now I'm really looking forward to King's next novel this year, Elevation.