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The outsider / Stephen King.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York, NY : Scribner, 2018.Description: pages cmISBN:
  • 9781501180989 (hardback) :
Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 813/.54 23
Summary: "An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad. As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King's propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can"-- Provided by publisher.
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Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Fiction Adult Fiction FIC KING Available 36748002447904
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Now an HBO limited series starring Ben Mendelsohn!​

Evil has many faces...maybe even yours in this #1 New York Times bestseller from master storyteller Stephen King.

An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens--Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King's story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

"An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad. As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King's propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can"-- Provided by publisher.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Stanhope: Oh, yes. Detective Anderson: Thank you, Mrs. Stanhope. Stanhope: Who could believe Terry would do such a thing? Do you suppose there have been others? Detective Anderson: We may find that out in the course of our investigation.   5   Since all City League tournament games were played at Estelle Barga Field--the best baseball field in the county, and the only one with lights for night games--home team advantage was decided by a coin toss. Terry Maitland called tails before the game, as he always did--it was a superstition handed down from his own City League coach, back in the day--and tails it was. "I don't care where we're playing, I just like to get my lasties," he always told his boys.     And tonight he needed them. It was the bottom of the ninth, the Bears were up in this league semifinal by a single run. The Golden Dragons were down to their last out, but they had the bases loaded. A walk, a wild pitch, an error, or an infield single would tie it, a ball hit into the gap would win it. The crowd was clapping, stamping the metal bleachers, and cheering as little Trevor Michaels stepped into the lefthand batter's box. His batting helmet was the smallest one they had, but it still shaded his eyes and he had to keep pushing it up. He twitched his bat nervously back and forth.   Terry had considered pinch-hitting for the boy, but at just an inch over five feet, he drew a lot of walks. And while he was no home run hitter, he was sometimes able to put the bat on the ball. Not often, but sometimes. If Terry lifted him for a pinch hitter, the poor kid would have to live with the humiliation through the whole next year of middle school. If, on the other hand, he managed a single, he would recall it over beers and backyard barbecues for the rest of his life. Terry knew. He'd been there himself, once upon a time, in the antique era before the game was played with aluminum bats.   The Bears pitcher--their closer, a real fireballer--wound up and threw one right down the heart of the plate. Trevor watched it go by with an expression of dismay. The umpire called strike one. The crowd groaned.   Gavin Frick, Terry's assistant coach, paced up and down in front of the boys on the bench, the scorebook rolled up in one hand (how many times had Terry asked him not to do that?), and his XXL Golden Dragons tee-shirt straining over his belly, which was XXXL at least. "I hope letting Trevor bat for himself wasn't a mistake, Ter," he said. Sweat was trickling down his cheeks. "He looks scared to death, and I don't b'lieve he could hit that kid's speedball with a tennis racket."     "Let's see what happens," Terry said. "I've got a good feeling about this." He didn't, not really.   The Bears pitcher wound up and released another burner, but this one landed in the dirt in front of home plate. The crowd rose to its feet as Baibir Patel, the Dragons' tying run at third, jinked a few steps down the line. They settled back with a groan as the ball bounced into the catcher's mitt. The Bears catcher turned to third, and Terry could read his expression, even through the mask: Justtry it, homeboy. Baibir didn't.   The next pitch was wide, but Trevor flailed at it, anyway.   "Strike him out, Fritz!" a leather-lung shouted from high up in the bleachers--almost surely the fireballer's father, from the way the kid snapped his head in that direction. "Strike him owwwwwt !"   Trevor didn't offer at the next pitch, which was close--too close to take, really, but the ump called it a ball, and it was the Bears' fans' turn to groan. Someone suggested that the ump needed stronger glasses. Another fan mentioned something about a seeing-eye dog.   Two and two now, and Terry had a strong sense that the Dragons' season hung on the next pitch. Either they would play the Panthers for the City championship, and go on to compete in the States--games that were actually televised--or they would go home and meet just one more time, at the barbecue in the Maitland backyard that traditionally marked the end of the season.   He turned to look at Marcy and the girls, sitting where they always did, in lawn chairs behind the home plate screen. His daughters were flanking his wife like pretty bookends. All three waved crossed fingers at him. Terry gave them a wink and a smile and two thumbs up, although he still didn't feel right. It wasn't just the game. He hadn't felt right for some time now. Not quite.   Marcy's return smile faltered into a puzzled frown. She was looking to her left, and jerked a thumb that way. Terry turned and saw two city cops walking in lockstep down the third base line, past Barry Houlihan, who was coaching there.   "Time, time!" the home plate umpire bellowed, stopping the Bears pitcher just as he went into his wind-up. Trevor Michaels stepped out of the batter's box, and with an expression of relief, Terry thought. The crowd had grown quiet, looking at the two cops. One of them was reaching behind his back. The other had his hand on the butt of his holstered service weapon.   "Off the field!" the ump was shouting. "Off the field!"   Troy Ramage and Tom Yates ignored him. They walked into the Dragons' dugout--a makeshift affair containing a long bench, three baskets of equipment, and a bucket of dirty practice balls--and directly to where Terry was standing. From the back of his belt, Ramage produced a pair of handcuffs. The crowd saw them, and raised a murmur that was two parts confusion and one part excitement: Ooooo.   "Hey, you guys!" Gavin said, hustling up (and almost tripping over Richie Gallant's discarded first baseman's mitt). "We've got a game to finish here!"   Yates pushed him back, shaking his head. The crowd was dead silent now. The Bears had abandoned their tense defensive postures and were just watching, their gloves dangling. The catcher trotted out to his pitcher, and they stood together halfway between the mound and home plate.   Terry knew the one holding the cuffs a little; he and his brother sometimes came to watch the Pop Warner games in the fall. "Troy? What is this? What's the deal?"   Ramage saw nothing on the man's face except what looked like honest bewilderment, but he had been a cop since the nineties, and knew that the really bad ones had that Who, me? look down to a science. And this guy was as bad as they came. Remembering Anderson's instructions (and not minding a bit), he raised his voice so he could be heard by the entire crowd, which the next day's paper would announce as 1,588.   "Terence Maitland, I am arresting you for the murder of Frank Peterson."   Another Ooooo from the bleachers, this one louder, the sound of a rising wind.   Terry frowned at Ramage. He understood the words, they were simple English words forming a simple declarative sentence, he knew who Frankie Peterson was and what had happened to him, but the meaning of the words eluded him. All he could say was "What? Are you kidding?" and that was when the sports photographer from the Flint City Call snapped his picture, the one that appeared on the front page the next day. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide, his hair was sticking out around the edges of his Golden Dragons cap. In that photo he looked both enfeebled and guilty.   " What did you say?"   "Hold out your wrists, please."   Terry looked at Marcy and his daughters, still sitting in their chairs behind the chickenwire, staring at him with identical expressions of frozen surprise. Horror would come later. Baibir Patel left third base and started to walk toward the dugout, taking off his batting helmet to show the sweaty mat of his black hair, and Terry saw the kid was starting to cry. "Get back there!" Gavin shouted at him. "Game's not over." But Baibir only stood in foul territory, staring at Terry and bawling. Terry stared back, positive ( almost positive) he was dreaming all this, and then Tom Yates grabbed him and yanked his arms out with enough force to make Terry stumble forward. Ramage snapped on the cuffs. Real ones, not the plastic strips, big and heavy, gleaming in the late sun. In that same rolling voice, he proclaimed: "You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions, but if you choose to speak, anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney during questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?"   "Troy?" Terry could hardly hear his own voice. He felt as if the wind had been punched out of him. "What in God's name is this?"   Ramage took no notice. "Do you understand?"   Marcy came to the chickenwire, hooked her fingers through it, and shook it. Behind her, Sarah and Grace were crying. Grace was on her knees beside Sarah's lawn chair; her own had fallen over and lay in the dirt. "What are you doing?" Marcy shouted. "What in God's name are you doing? And why are you doing it here ?"   "Do you understand?"   What Terry understood was that he had been handcuffed and was now being read his rights in front of almost sixteen hundred staring people, his wife and two young daughters among them. It was not a dream, and it was not simply an arrest. It was, for reasons he could not comprehend, a public shaming. Best to get it over as fast as possible, and get this thing straightened out. Although, even in his shock and bewilderment, he understood that his life would not be going back to normal for a long time.   "I understand," he said, and then: "Coach Frick, get back."   Gavin, who had been approaching the cops with his fists clenched and his fat face flushed a hectic red, lowered his arms and stepped back. He looked through the chickenwire at Marcy, raised his enormous shoulders, spread his pudgy hands.   In the same rolling tones, like a town crier belting out the week's big news in a New England town square, Troy Ramage continued. Ralph Anderson could hear him from where he stood leaning against the unmarked unit. He was doing a good job, was Troy. It was ugly, and Ralph supposed he might be reprimanded for it, but he would not be reprimanded by Frankie Peterson's parents. No, not by them.   "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you before any questioning, if you desire. Do you understand?"   "Yes," Terry said. "I understand something else, too." He turned to the crowd. "I have no idea why I'm being arrested! Gavin Frick willfinish coaching the game!" And then, as an afterthought: "Baibir, get back to third, and remember to run in foul territory."   There was a smatter of applause, but only a smatter. The leatherlung in the bleachers yelled again, "What'd you say he did?" And the crowd responding to the question, muttering the two words that would soon be all over the West Side and the rest of the city: Frank Peterson's name.   Yates grabbed Terry by the arm and started hustling him toward the snack shack and the parking lot beyond. "You can preach to the multitudes later, Maitland. Right now you're going to jail. And guess what? We have the needle in this state, and we use it. But you're a teacher, right? You probably knew that."   They hadn't gotten twenty steps from the makeshift dugout before Marcy Maitland caught up and grabbed Tom Yates's arm. "What in God's name do you think you're doing?"   Yates shrugged her off, and when she tried to grasp her husband's arm, Troy Ramage pushed her away, gently but firmly. She stood where she was for a moment, dazed, then saw Ralph Anderson walking to meet his arresting officers. She knew him from Little League, when Derek Anderson had played for Terry's team, the Gerald's Fine Groceries Lions. Ralph hadn't been able to come to all the games, of course, but he came to as many as possible. Back then he'd still been in uniform; Terry had sent him a congratulatory email when he was promoted to detective. Now she ran toward him, fleet over the grass in her old tennis shoes, which she always wore to Terry's games, claiming there was good luck in them.   "Ralph!" she called. "What's going on? This is a mistake!"   "I'm afraid it isn't," Ralph said.   This part he didn't like, because he liked Marcy. On the other hand, he had always liked Terry, as well--the man had probably changed Derek's life only a little, given the boy just a smatter of confidence-building, but when you were eleven years old, a little confidence was a big deal. And there was something else. Marcy might have known what her husband was, even if she didn't allow herself to know on a conscious level. The Maitlands had been married a long time, and horrors like the Peterson boy's murder simply did not come out of thin air. There was always a build-up to the act.   "You need to go home, Marcy. Right away. You may want to leave the girls with a friend, because there will be police waiting for you."   She only looked at him, uncomprehending.   From behind them came the chink of an aluminum bat making good contact, although there were few cheers; those in attendance were still shocked, and more interested in what they'd just witnessed than the game before them. Which was sort of a shame. Trevor Michaels had just hit the ball harder than ever before in his life, harder even than when Coach T was throwing meatballs in practice. Unfortunately, it was a line drive straight to the Bears shortstop, who didn't even have to jump to make the catch. Game over.     Excerpted from The Outsider by Stephen King All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The skillfully rendered accents of Will Patton bring this dark whodunit to life with dramatic skill that nicely conveys mood and tone. King (Mr. Mercedes) combines a police procedural with elements of the super-natural. A young child has been brutally assaulted and murdered in Flint City, OK, and Det. Ralph Anderson is certain that the perpetrator is popular Little League coach and high school English teacher Terry -Maitland. Anderson and several colleagues publicly arrest Maitland during a hotly contested baseball game. Then things start to unravel as Anderson learns that there is quite a bit of conflicting evidence. Several of Mait-land's teacher colleagues can vouch that he was with them attending a convention at the time of the murder, which is further confirmed by video from a local news channel. -VERDICT Recommended for King's myriad fans and for those wanting a mystery that's a bit outside the ordinary. ["King's fans may be dispirited by this latest dis-appointing thriller; however, his name alone will ensure it flies off the shelves": LJ 4/1/18 review of the Scribner hc.]-David Faucheux, Lafayette, LA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Reader Patton's steady, realistic narration adds a strong element of credibility to King's supernatural police procedural, in which a small-town detective is faced with an apparently impossible crime. The worst day in the life of Flint City, Okla., detective Ralph Anderson is when he arrests popular Little League baseball coach Terry Maitland for the murder of a young boy. The coach's fingerprints and DNA are all over the crime scene, but he has an ironclad alibi: he was at a convention in another city and has witnesses and even video footage to prove it. Subsequent events suggest the presence of an otherworldly serial killer whom Anderson and his associates set out to find and destroy. Joining them is Holly Gibney, a fascinating character from the author's Bill Hodges crime trilogy. Brilliantly deductive, neurotic, and obsessively determined, she quickly takes over the novel, and Patton provides her with an edgy, breathless, and impatient voice that, at times, is an almost crooning stream-of-consciousness. Patton's approach for Anderson and his other associates is more conventional: they speak in fittingly tough, hardboiled tones. As for the voice of the monstrous outsider, it is surprisingly conversational and educated, with just a hint of chilling playfulness. This audiobook demonstrates King's ability to make even the most fantastic story believable and poignant, and Patton's unswerving talent for making fiction feel real. A Scribner hardcover. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Two quick years after concluding his Bill Hodges trilogy of mystery novels with End of Watch (2016), King returns to the genre (and even brings back a character) with a book that showcases his best and worst instincts. The first half, a police procedural, is absolutely riveting. Oklahoma detective Ralph Anderson relishes arresting local little-league coach Terry Maitland for the brutal murder of an 11-year-old boy. Multiple witnesses saw him, his DNA is all over the scene it's open and shut. But is it? King makes you feel Ralph's drowning panic as evidence, just as irrefutable, places Terry in another town. The impossibility of the mystery is intoxicating, and readers will get dizzy from their shifting sympathies. And then . . . well, King loyalists will see this coming. Seemingly written into a corner, the story goes supernatural, with a Salem's Lot-style gang of reluctant heroes taking up arms against a foe who has something to do with a Mexican monster legend and women-wrestler films. Still, the amazingly strong start should be enough to fuel most readers through the end.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Along with Revival (2014), Mr. Mercedes (2014), and Full Dark, No Stars (2010), this is another shockingly dark book perfect for longtime fans, of whom there are, well, zillions.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.If you're a little squeamish about worms, you're really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: "His throat was just gone," says the man who found the body. "Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something." Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stageand it doesn't help Anderson's world-weariness when the evil doesn't stop once Terry's in the ground. Natch, there's a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King's early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King's concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he's at his best, as always, when he's painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: "June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack." Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity's head caves in "as if it had been made of papier-mch rather than bone." And then there are those worms. Yuck.Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King's boundless legion of fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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