The Colorado Kid

by Stephen King
124 pgs

With The Colorado Kid, Stephen King tips his hat to the style and genre of storytelling that he grew up enjoying so much. It’s a short mystery that begins with the body of an unidentified man discovered on a small island off the coast of Maine in 1980. The story is being told years later by two reporters from The Weekly Islander, the small local newspaper that covers the news on the island, to Stephanie McCann, a young intern working for the paper.

The body, which was found by two teenagers before school, is that of a man unknown to anyone on the island. There was no wallet or identification found on him and he apparently died from choking on a piece of meat, which was found half eaten and stuck down his throat. The only clue the police have is a pack of cigarettes, which bears a stamp from the state of Colorado on the bottom, found in his pocket. The investigation that takes place reveals more questions than answers. Questions such as why the man, whom doctors a sure was not a smoker himself, was carrying the pack of cigarettes.

If you’re the type who gets frustrated if every question doesn’t get answered by the end of the book, this book may not be for you. The story is more about the mystery surrounding The Colorado Kid, and the retelling of the case by two old mentors to their young intern.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Sandman

by Lars Kepler
449 pgs  (Joona Linna series #4)

As The Sandman begins, a young man named Mikael Kohler-Frost is found wandering along a snowy railroad bridge near Stockholm, nearly dead from both sickness and malnourishment. It’s the first time he’s been seen since he and his younger sister Felicia went missing from their home 13 years ago.

Thirteen years ago, when the two disappeared, Detective Inspector Joona Linna with Sweden’s National Crime Force investigated the disappearance, but was never able to determine what happened. The official police verdict was that the children drowned in the river by their home, but Linna always suspected they had been victims of Jurek Walter, one of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, who is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum-security psychiatric institution.

Detective Linna always suspected Jurek had an accomplice working with him, but was never able to prove it. Now that Mikael has escaped, he’s sure there was one, and that he’s out there and still has Felicia. He has to somehow get Jurek to talk and reveal where Felicia is being kept. His only chance is Saga Bauer, a beautiful female agent willing to go deep undercover as a patient in the institution to get to Jurek.

The Sandman is the fourth book Lars Kepler’s (pseudonym for husband-and-wife team Alexandra and Alexander Ahndoril) series featuring Inspector Joona Linna, and I’m disappointed in myself for not knowing about the series until now. The book has some definite flaws, but I found myself not really caring about those, because I was enjoying the story so much. There are elements of the story that reminded me of Silence of the Lambs, and the chapters are so brief, it’s hard not to justify reading “just one more” before putting the book down.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles
462 pgs

Occasionally, a book comes out that I wouldn’t normally consider reading, but that for some reason or other, I seem fated to read. I’ll pick it up and read the summary on the flap, and think it looks interesting, but there are so many other books I want to read, I’ll never get around to it. So, I put it back down. But then the universe seems to start working on getting me to read it. I see it displayed prominently in the “Staff Picks” section in all the bookstores I enter, it’s recommended to me by multiple people, and I keep picking it back up when I see it in bookstores and rereading the description. When that happens, I eventually give in and buy it. A Gentleman in Moscow is one of those books.

Count Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s esteemed Metropol hotel by the country’s new Soviet regime. His crime was writing a counter-revolutionary poem, and for his punishment, he’s branded a “Former Person” and sentenced to live out his days residing on the top floor of the hotel, in a room barely 100 feet square.

The book spans decades, and while one would think that telling a story that covers that much time, all within the walls of a single building would limit the story in some way, Towles manages to tell a story that is both grand and intimate at the same time.

Count Rostov is a fantastic character. He’s refined, intelligent, witty, and sensitive. He’s easy to like and I found myself quickly becoming fascinated by his life in the hotel, and the stories of his life prior to the Metropol. He creates a family within the hotel for himself, with members of the staff and those who come to stay at the hotel included. He experiences the love a father has for a child with a young girl who becomes his ward, all while living in a cramped room barely big enough for a bed and a desk.

I’ve learned to trust the universe’s advice when it wants me to read a book, and A Gentleman in Moscow is a perfect example of why.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Borne

by Jeff Vandermeer
323 pgs

Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne is one of the stranger books among those in the dystopian fiction genre. It’s narrated by Rachel, a 28-year-old who lives with Wick in an old apartment building, filled with booby traps and disguised as a refuse heap. Rachel spends her days scavenging for scraps of food and supplies throughout the destroyed city they live in. She and Wick also live their lives hiding from Mord, a bear the size of a department store…who can fly.

One day, while scavenging, Rachel comes across a dark purple object about the size of her fist, and takes it back to her and Wick’s apartment. The object resembles a cross between a squid and a sea anemone. It can change color, starts to grow, begins to move, and one day…begins to speak. Rachel names it Borne and begins treating it like a pet. But Wick is suspicious of Borne. Small objects and even animals begin to disappear and Wick believes Borne is responsible.

He suspects Borne comes from the same place as Mord did, “the Company,” an enigmatic biotech company that filled the world with strange and bizarre products before going silent. But Borne is different than any other biotechnology they’ve come across before. It has the ability to learn and to transform itself into any object, living or non-living at will.

Vandermeer never explains how the world got to the state it’s in when his story starts. Readers should be prepared to have a lot of questions they’ll have go unanswered throughout the story. But if they can avoid getting hung up on those questions, they should enjoy the story for what it is, a bizarre and unsettling story about human and non-human intelligence and how far it could go.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆