In Stephen King’s latest novel, there are no dark towers. No reanimated pets. No vampires, rabid dogs or possessed cars. No horrors of any kind. Just two old newspapermen shootin’ the shit with their purty young summer intern, telling her about a 25-year-old unsolved mystery surrounding their Maine islander town.

THE COLORADO KID is an interesting experiment, not only because King gets a chance to work outside of his comfort zone, but also we have a murder mystery in which we never see the murder (if that’s indeed what happened) and the mystery remains unsolved. Some may be frustrated about the lack of closure in King’s own story, but in all fairness, his characters do warn the reader – not once, not twice, but several times! In his afterword, King argues that all the ends that needed to be tied are done so neatly. After all, some things should be left to one’s imagination.

The title refers to the corpse of a Denver advertising artist, found on the beach by two high schoolers one morning in 1980. Because he’s a John Doe – at least initially – the cops don’t care much about it, leaving the two journalists and a forensics grad student to do most of the digging in determining the man’s identity. They succeed. But in trying to figure out what led to his death, they fail, bringing to light more questions than answers.

All of this is relayed to the present-day intern over the course of the book, which is essentially one long conversation. This stylistic choice may seem awkward at first, but is actually a natural for it, given that the KID’s theme is not so much about the murder or the mystery than it is about society’s need for closure and the role of the journalist in providing that.

Reading almost like a play, THE COLORADO KID is a breeze to read, partly because the conversation flows as freely as real life and partly because it’s less than 175 pages long. I was as wrapped up in what mystery there is as I was the mere communication between the characters.