Joyland

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 8/04/2013

A haunted carnival funhouse gives a supernatural spin to events in Thriller Award winner King's period murder mystery with a heart. In the summer of 1973, 21-year-old college student Devin Jones takes a job at Joyland, a North Carolina amusement park. Almost immediately, a boardwalk fortune-teller warns that Devin has "a shadow" over him, and that his destiny is intertwined with that of terminally ill Mike Ross, a 10-year-old boy who has "the sight." Shortly after Devin meets Mike, Mike makes a cryptic comment: "It's not white." This proves a vital clue when Devin begins investigating an unsolved murder committed four years before at the carnival's Horror House, and quickly stumbles into more than he bargained for. King (The Colorado Kid) brings his usual finesse to this tale's mystery elements, and makes Dev's handling of them crucial to the novel's bigger coming-of-age story, in which Dev adapts to the carny life and finds true romance.