3.5/5

“Well then, I'm going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who's been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories - those with beginnings, middles, and ends - are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside) and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls a musta-been, your reader will tell himself a story.

Stephanie McCann, an intern at The Weekly Islander, has her deductive abilities put to the test by the founder of the paper Vince Teague and and editor Dave Bowie, as they tell her the story of the mysterious death of a man 25 years ago, whose body was found on the beach by two teenagers. Unlike a lot of stories, this one has several unknowns and very few facts we can be certain of, and even those facts don't fully add up without some very exceptional circumstances. How exactly did this man die? Did he choke on a piece of meat he was randomly having on the beach and met his demise? Did he have a stroke? Did the stroke trigger his choking, or did the choking trigger his stroke? Or was he purposely murdered, by somehow being poisoned? What was he doing there in the first place?

This book does a great job putting the reader in the atmosphere of the whole setting. The reader will most likely feel positive immersion, easily dipping themselves into the world, sitting alongside Stephanie McCann while she listens to the scarce clues available that paint some image of this very obscure story.

Stephen King does drown us in the little details, and we are left wondering which details matter and which ones don't, but in order to solve any mystery, this approach is necessary. This is a cozy read, and the immersive aspect of it is what made me enjoy experiencing the story, even if I didn't necessarily get the answers I wanted. To be fair, Vince and Dave do tell Stephanie that this case was NOT solved, and we are in for a mystery that has no closure, so Stephen King did remain true to his narrative. I just wonder if an actual explanation for this mystery does exist, or if it was written with no true, logical version of what really happened.

Regardless of that though, I did enjoy my time just chilling with these characters, listening to a mystery that truly has no definitive clarity at the moment.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Jeffrey DeMunn, who did a good job giving his voice to these characters and this story. I recommend this as a light read, as long as you're not hell-bent on finishing the book having received the answers you were hoping for. Some things can just never be truly figured out, I suppose.

“It was that kind of story. The kind that’s like a sneeze which threatens but never quite arrives.”