With very few exceptions, Stephen King’s books in Britain are published by Hodder & Stoughton and at the beginning of these books contain a very long list of Stephen King books they have published. When I first began reading King, I made the rooky mistake of assuming that this very long list contained every King book available but this is not the case. Joyland is one of those exceptions to the Hodder & Stoughton general rule as it was published by Hard Case Crime.
I only realised that there were other King books when I decided to read about Joyland before it was published in June 2013. In my research, I discovered that Joyland was the second book he published with Hard Case Crime; the first was The Colorado Kid which of course is not contained in the very long at the beginning of a Hodder & Stoughton King book. The TV series Haven was based on The Colorado Kid first published in 2005 with the fourth season airing in September 2013.
Joyland is an amusement park which I think is brilliant setting for a Stephen King story. When I was reading about Joyland before it came out, I found out that The Shining was originally going to be called “Dark Shine” and the setting was going to be an amusement park in the off-season as opposed to the Overlook Hotel. The cover of Joyland was released before the book, and as the cliché goes “never judge a book by its cover” should apply however the cover is fabulously throwback noir – very enticing!
The book was for Hard Case Crime and has a retro feel to it. Because of this, Stephen King came to the controversial decision not to release it as an eBook. King is not a luddite, his other books are available as eBooks, but he wanted to release the book in the tradition the book is set in, this why it was only released in paperback as opposed to hardback first. King’s thought was also to get readers to have to go into a bookstore, if necessarily reacquaint themselves with the bookstore, in order to access it which I can go along with.
Joyland has been described as a “whodunit” and “a story about growing up and growing old” by Charles Ardai, the Hard Case Crime editor, who noted the ending made him cry. Well personally I wouldn’t go that far regarding the ending but it was satisfying. Joyland is an easy short read with a satisfying overall outcome. I’ve never read a “whodunit” story before, and to be honest, with this story I wasn’t extremely curious who the murderer was.
Finishing Joyland was satisfying but it is by no means King’s best work, in fact this could be considered really as a short story. Having been terribly excited about the setting, I was disappointed that the amusement park wasn’t utilized as much as I would have liked. The setting had a lot of potential then again this book was for the specific genre for Hard Case Crime. I think King should come back to the amusement park setting, not with a “whodunit” story, but a more chilling supernatural one – possibly with clowns!
KING OF MACABRE 