The Outsider starts out promising: a mysterious murder, conflicting evidence that points at a man being in two places at once, implications of some supernatural evil (the author name, Stephen King, should make that obvious going in) and a compelling main character, Detective Ralph Anderson, whose guilt over his actions drives him to make things right. We’re off to a great start.
Then Holly Gibney shows up, and everything goes to shit.
Where to start with her? Now granted, I have not read the Bill Hodges trilogy; if I had, my opinion might be different. But this silly, gimmick character comes in and hijacks a story that had been trucking along nice. I simply cannot think of a reason for her to be here other than a cheap tie-in to a book trilogy I haven’t read, and if Holly Gibney is featured heavily in it, believe me, that’s not going to change.
There’s no reason Ralph Anderson couldn’t have been the one to pursue the case to Dayton Ohio and tie everything together–in fact, it should have been him. His story is atoning for the wrongs he did to Terry Maitland’s family, not being enlightened by this second-rate Agent Mulder. There’s also the issue of introducing the supernatural; Holly Gibney quickly suggests the mythological creature El Cuco as the true murderer, and people for the most part just go along with it.
And here’s something that I hate to have to say: the HBO miniseries is better. It still has the book’s fatal flaw (i.e. Holly Gibney), but at least in the miniseries Terry Maitland’s widow rejects the El Cuco theory. In the book, she’s on board right away. Another win for the miniseries of the confrontation at the end. In the book, Holly Gibney delivers the fatal blow and has the lion’s share of the interaction with El Cuco. In the show, it’s Ralph Anderson, which just reinforces my first point: Ralph Anderson should have been the driving force of this story because he is a far more compelling character than Holly Gibney.
I’m a big Stephen King fan. He got me into writing, and I think he’s a great writer who crafts believable characters no matter what the literary types think, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. But do you know who this book reminds me of? Tom Clancy. I mean that in the sense that simply placing Stephen King’s name on a cover guarantees a spot on the bestseller list, so perhaps his give-a-crap levels are close to zero. And that’s a pity, because when Stephen King wants to knock it out of the park, he can hit a grand slam.
