An Imprint Fit for a King

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

It doesn’t happen often in real life, but it happens a lot in wild fantasies. No, I’m not referring to Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt (depending upon your fantasy, which you can keep to yourself, thank you very much) knocking on your door, begging to spend the night.


Imagine you’re someone with the crazy idea that you’d like to start a publishing company. Your friends, and your banker, will look at you as if you’ve lost your mind. The smart ones will tell you so. Don’t you know, they’ll remind you, that books are dying, that people don’t read any more, that video games are where it’s at?


You know better, of course, so you get on with the dream, finding authors and dealing with printers, cover artists, distribution, finances, and the thousand other things (none as glamorous as they might seem from the outside) you need to do to form an actual business.


That’s what Charles Ardai did two years ago, when he started a little house devoted to publishing old-fashioned paperback pulp fiction, with slightly sleazy GGA (good girl art) covers. He decided to call the dream Hard Case Crime.


A fan of the hardboiled writers of the 1950s, Mr. Ardai planned to reprint some of the great noir writers of that earlier era, and has already published Lawrence Block, Erle Stanley Gardner, Donald E. Westlake, and Wade Miller, among others.


There have been new books, too, and that’s where the fantasy part of this story comes in. Of the original novels published in the first year of Hard Case Crime, one, “Little Girl Lost” by Richard Aleas, was nominated for Best First Novel at the 2005 Edgar Awards. Another, “The Confession” by Domenic Stansberry, was picked as the Best Paperback Original.


But Mr. Ardai was just warming up. Knowing that Stephen King admired great noir fiction, as he had written and spoken about it on numerous occasions, he asked the highly prolific, ridiculously successful, and enormously talented author for a quote to help promote the imprint. Mr. King said he had a better idea: How would Mr. Ardai like to publish his next novel, a pulpy story that Mr. King thought would fit nicely on his list?


After smelling salts were passed under his nose to revive him, Mr. Ardai allowed that this might be a good thing, and soon “The Colorado Kid” (184 pages, $5.99) was delivered. It is published this week, and, as they have been saying for a long time, is now available in a bookstore near you.


Before saying anything about the book, I have to be honest and tell you it’s a bit of a fraud. It is not a hardboiled, noir thriller, with the usual doom and gloom. Everyone doesn’t die, the hero doesn’t fall in love with a girl who betrays him, there is no onstage sex or violence or even tough talk. Not even tough guys. It is actually a rather sweet story.


Ostensibly, “The Colorado Kid” is about a fully clothed body found on a Maine beach, sitting up, leaning against a trash can. The police are unable to identify the victim, as there is nothing in his pockets except $17 and a pack of cigarettes and matches. How did he get there? Why was he there? How did he die?


In truth, however, it’s the charming story of two old coots who run the local newspaper, as they have done for more than half a century, and the 22-year-old intern who came to Maine for the summer.


“The Colorado Kid” is a leisurely story, told in a question-and-answer format. The intern desperately wants answers, while the old-timers tease her along, testing her to see if she’s smart enough to ask the right questions. As she passes each test, the newspapermen let out a bit more of the story, one tiny piece at a time of a jigsaw puzzle that will ultimately form the delightful image of a shaggy dog.


In an afterword, Mr. King speaks to the reader and says you either loved this story or hated it, but it’s the way he wanted to tell it. It is an exploration of mystery and, as such, may not have a neatly tied-up ending. It is the existence of the mystery, of that corpse on the beach, that is the salient fact.


As I see it, Mr. King has shown us a magic trick, an illusion, but, unlike most mystery writers, doesn’t show us how it was done. What he does show is the warmth and generosity of some old codgers in his part of the country. He probably knows a hundred of them, and they reflect his own persona.


This book, so generously offered to Hard Case Crime, will ensure the success of that imprint for a long time. Mr. King could have been paid a lot more by someone else, but he made this decision. It’s not the first time.


Many years ago, I started a little publishing house, the Mysterious Press, at my kitchen table. The struggle to keep it alive was greater than my darkest nightmare. Mr. King, pretty much out of the blue, asked if I’d like to publish a limited, signed edition of his new novel, “Cujo.” Of course I did. All 750 copies sold out within days, I was able to pay the printer’s bills for two other books, and the press survived, eventually flourishing.


Hard Case Crime has been called the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade, and I wouldn’t disagree. Stephen King has been called the best writer of popular fiction in the past quarter-century, and I wouldn’t disagree with that, either. More importantly, though, he is royalty of another kind as well – the human kind, as this magnanimous melding of book and publisher attests.



Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached atopenzler@nysun.com.


The New York Sun

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