Stephen King's latest is a supernatural mystery and coming of age tale. It is an odd selection for pulp revivalist publisher Hard Case Crime. They normally publish hardboiled detective stories with titles like Say It With Bullets, The Corpse Wore Pasties and The Vengeful Virgin, but if the writer is Stephen King - hell, you could get away with a boddice ripping romance and it would probably sell.
Devin Jones is a university student who takes a summer job at a third-rate amusement park on the North Carolina coast. Joyland hangs on dearly to its carnival traditions but because it stays in one place it won't risk the ire of the local rubes: the games are (mostly) legit and the carnival workers are more tolerant of outsiders. In between jobs cleaning rides, stocking prize shelves, and dressing up as a German shepherd, Devin deals with a broken heart, makes new friends, and gets wrapped up in the unsolved murder of a young woman whose body was discovered on the park's haunted house ride. In Stephen King fashion, the girl's ghost is haunts the ride where she was slain, showing herself only to a few fortunate - or unfortunate - park staff. The ghost story takes a backseat to the to the murder plot, but it plays nicely with the mysterious and facinating world of the carnival.
The characters are very well written and the real reason I kept reading. Not a whole lot happens in the first hundred pages and Devin's woe-is-me pity party gets a little tiresome, but he's still a likable enough kid to keep you interested. Once the story kicks into gear King digs his hooks in deeper and you find yourself on the Thunderball roller coaster as clues fall into place, relationships develop and a mad killer shows his face.
Joyland is not a typical horror story, nor is it a straight-up crime story, though it is far better than King's first Hard Case book, The Colorado Kid. It is a book about love and life and how both can be fulfilling but also tragically short. If you liked The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, or The Green Mile then you'll like this.