“The Outsider”

Just wrapped up an 18 and half hour listen of Stephen King’s “The Outsider”. My longest audiobook probably.

“The Outsider” is good but not great. It has its moments though and the story gets better and picks up pace as we go along. It’s very “procedural” and you can think of it as a piece of tapestry slowly woven together by the various threads that is each chapter. That part is good. I don’t mind verbosity and lots of detail and meandering etc., and it’s good to see everything slowly come to place and fit together.

What didn’t make this great for me though is that it is less in the vein of his “Bill Hodges” trilogy, although the book is meant to be a spiritual successor to it I think in that it’s a murder mystery and has one of the characters – Holly Gibney – play a central role in this book. I loved the “Bill Hodges” trilogy. They had the right pace and mystery for me and while the third one was less mystery and more of Mr. King’s usual super natural stuff I didn’t mind it and it gelled along with the rest of the books. “The Outsider” continues this by taking up the supernatural a notch.

Holly Gibney was amazing. It was nice how towards the middle of the book he just introduces her into the story. Didn’t expect that but I wasn’t too surprised coz I think I read somewhere that she plays a part in this book. (I purchased the audiobook as it was narrated by Will Patton and seemed to be a murder mystery like the “Bill Hodges” trilogy). Holly took charge of things once she was introduced and slowly got everyone to see the big picture and “believe” in the Outsider. All that plot development was great. The few ending chapters were good too – not much action just a slow putting us Dear Readers back on the floor after taking us for this journey.