Perused Stephen King’s website and only just now learned of Joyland, one of his new novels releasing 06/04/13 (and already optioned for the big screen). A brief synopsis is featured:

“Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.”

Interest: piqued.

Becoming a big fan of hard-boiled crime, though I’ve read only a small number of them (the bulk of my exposure to the genre has been in cinematic form, but I’ve a few James M. Cain novels on my bookshelf). Most recent read in that vein was Cain’s posthumous The Cocktail Waitress. Perhaps it’s not exceptional – some reviews have cut it down for not being as strong as Cain’s other works – but given that the work is a ‘long lost’ treasure pieced together from various scraps of manuscripts over many years, and it features a strong femme fatale-esque protagonist, it’s a good romp. And it doesn’t hurt that King offers a favourable dust jacket review.

Read it.♦