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Saturday 16 August 2014

Review:- Joyland by Stephen KIng

Joyland

By Stephen King

2013, Hard Case Crime Paperback, 285pp




This novel, which is somewhere around Stephen King’s fiftieth, rather than being released by his normal publishing house, has gone out as one of the Hard Case Crime series [No. 112] by [in the Uk] Titan Books. So it was with a little trepidation that I decided to read this; I expected something hard case, hard boiled, noir, but generally different to the usual King ride. I got no such thing.


JOYLAND could easily have been published as regular King. A quick plot; set in the early 1970’s,  Devin Jones, a 21 year old college boy, takes a summer out to work in Joyland, a North Carolina amusement park. There he makes new [lifelong] friends, learns the Talk and Ways of the carny-folk, becomes reknowned for his skills in performing as Howie the Hound Dog, the park’s mascot, and gets highly interested in a girl who was murdered inside the Horror House ride. As college beckons, and his friends head for school, Devin stays around, cultivating a relationship with local Annie Ross, and her young disabled kid, Mike, who is slowly dying of muscular dystrophy. All the strands of the plot come together towards the end; Devin has worked out that The Carny Killer murdered much more than just one girl, and also that they might be closer to him that he had ever realised.


JOYLAND is a good novel, enjoyable, with some well-drawn and interesting characters. I found it very much to be instantly recognisable as a Stephen King story; his trademarks of style are here, as well as trademarks of plot. In some ways, with a new carny setting, it seems like a distillation and continuation of some of King’s past themes, especially so with the disabled kid Mike [well realised, great character] who has some uncanny touches of intuition. In fact, far from being a hard crime novel, this is very much typical and highly enjoyable Stephen King, with a serial killer, some ghosts and some characters with psyhcic abilities [King never mentions the Sh- word, so neither will I]. I easily found myself believing in the main characters, enjoying the mystery, and being excited in finding out who the villain was. I was slightly disappointed with the resolution of the mystery, and with the ending to the plot, although the book itself ends on a thoughtful and slightly melancholic note.


In summary, this is good stuff; unusually, I found the middle third to be the strongest and most compelling, but the whole is an engaging crime and ghost story, and regular King readers who enjoy the horror should not be disinclined to read this because of the heavily indicated crime aspect. JOYLAND continues to demonstrate that each new Stephen King work that appears is certainly something to be enjoyed and celebrated. 8/10





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