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Sarah (7800 KP) rated The Outsider in Books

Jul 13, 2018

The Outsider

Stephen King | 2018 | Thriller

8.7

(31 Ratings)

Book Rating

King does it again

My main worry about this book was that it didn't sound enough like King - on paper it almost sounded like a bog standard crime thriller. Fortunately though that wasn't the case!

This is yet another brilliantly written King novel, filled with intrigue, suspense and a lot of fairly gruesome horror. The characters are, as always, well written and the story centres mainly around the lovable detective Ralph Anderson (although chapters centred around other characters offer some nice variety). The central supernatural plot is one that I've seen/read before in other works of fiction, but it definitely doesn't get boring seeing it from King's point of view. There are some unexpected links to some other of King's stories - one obvious and direct, but another link for me was more of a similarity to a previous character - neither of which is a bad thing.

My only criticisms of this book are fairly minor. The first is that the ending seems fairly rushed in comparison with the slow build of the rest of the book. And the second is that although it is a very good and enthralling read, it doesn't quite have the impact of some of his older epic novels (The Dark Tower series, The Stand, Needful Things etc).

Kudos

ClareR (5945 KP) rated Close to Home in Books

Jan 7, 2020

Close to Home

Cara Hunter | 2017 | Crime, Fiction & Poetry, Thriller

7.6

(7 Ratings)

Book Rating

I didn’t want to put this down!

Eighteen months ago, I wouldn’t have picked up this book. I thought I didn’t like police procedural, crime or thriller novels. However, The Pigeonhole has opened up a whole new genre to me, and I’m so glad - I wouldn’t have read this book for a start!

I think Adam Fawley is going to be a detective that I will enjoy reading about. This isn’t a pleasant subject: an eight year old child, Daisy Mason, goes missing, and rather than doing everything they can to help find her, her parents are positively obstructive. Her younger brother is withdrawn - in fact it really doesn’t look good for the parents.

The police team are all great characters to read about, and DI Fawley is very human. We learn about his tragic background, and the reason why he works so hard to find Daisy.

I just really liked everything about this - the storyline isn’t needlessly gruesome, the characters are really well described and the ending was so good (oh, it had me rubbing my hands together!). To be honest, I’ve already bought the next two books in the series!

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole and Cara Hunter for reading along.