Stephanie McCann’s three-month internship at The Weekly Islander placed her under the tutelage of two long-time journalists, the entire staff at the helm of the Moose-Lookit Islands newspaper. Vince Teague was ninety years old and Dave Bowie was twenty-five years his junior.

After a frustrating luncheon trying to pull information from the two longtime writers, a Baltimore Globe reporter hightailed it back to the mainland. Following his abrupt departure, the two men decided school was in session for their young intern by relating the circumstances of a John Doe mystery that occurred on the island twenty-five years before.

The master storytellers, the Islander writers and Stephen King, begin a tale about two teenagers who find the body of a man leaning against a trash barrel on the island beach. No identification and no clues as to how he got there, or why, were found at the scene.

As the men slowly reveal the steps taken to solve the mystery, Stephanie soon realizes she is sitting at the proverbial feet of two of the best journalistic tutors around. As the story unfolds, it soon becomes apparent how quickly law enforcement can set aside a case when there is little to go on and other cases call for attention, not to mention the lack of interest by the two detectives from the Attorney Generals office.

If not for the curiosity of Paul Devane, a young graduate student in forensic science undergoing a three-month internship with the less-than-stellar detectives, the identity of John Doe may never have surfaced. As it was, it took sixteen months to identify the body. However, could anyone ever explain how he came to be on the beach that night?

In The Colorado Kid, Stephen King intertwines the story of the mysterious stranger with the obvious love and respect the two old storytellers have for one another and their desire to lead their intern into a deeper level of knowledge and desire for investigative reporting. King masterfully walks the reader through the investigative process in this apparently unsolvable case.

Long known as a writer of paranormal thrillers, King also profoundly digs deep into the soul of man with gripping accuracy. He leads the reader on a compelling, thorough, and haunting character study. Once the reader begins this story, he or she may as well settle in, it is that difficult to close this book until the thought-provoking finish.