The Outsider

Holly Gibney introduces the term “outsider” to describe the doppelgänger. She has encountered a similar entity before and recognizes its pattern of behavior—adopting the appearance of another person to confuse pursuit. Although the investigators think of the outsider as supernatural—something like a vampire—the only thing “supernatural” about it is that the investigators have never encountered or heard about anything like it. Despite its unfamiliarity, the entity is as material as any human serial killer.

Based on myths and legends, the outsiders appear to have been around as long as humankind. They might be merely “outsiders” to the human race—an apex predator that evolved alongside humans. However, because they are unlike any other known creature on earth, they seem more likely to have come from another planet or universe.

The outsider itself has apparently forgotten or never known its own origin. The urgency with which it asks Holly whether she has encountered another of its kind suggests that outsiders are very rare. The question suggests a desire for a connection to its kind or its history—a need to know where it came from. King leaves the question of the outsider’s origin unanswered.

The image of the outsider dissolving into a puddle of writhing worms is reminiscent of the vampires of Guillermo Del Toro and Brian Lumley. Del Toro’s vampires are literally hosts to colonies of worms, and Brian Lumley’s vampires are a single leech-like organism. In both cases, as in The Outsider, the “supernatural” entity turns out to have material origins, even if those origins aren’t something with which we are familiar. The material vampires are perhaps more frightening in a world where science has defanged the genuinely supernatural. Creatures like vampires and werewolves have become the subject of romance novels, but science is opening up an infinite universe that could contain horrors beyond human imagining.

Terry Maitland is a beloved Little League coach who has come in contact with hundreds of children over the years. When we meet him, he is worried about his decision to put a child at bat rather than using a pinch-hitter. The boy is an irregular batter, but to show a lack of confidence in him would be humiliating. To Terry, the self-respect of this one boy is more important than winning a game. This look inside the mind of an unusually good man is the surest evidence the reader has that Terry is not the murderer. On the other hand, Terry and a few other characters have noticed that he has been acting distracted lately.

The fact that the reader experiences part of the story through Terry’s eyes encourages readers to regard him as a protagonist, but he becomes the second victim of the outsider without ever having an opportunity to directly influence the story’s action. In his death, Terry functions as a Christ figure sacrificed for someone else’s sins: Ralph even begs the fatally wounded Terry to redeem him by confessing to the murder. In a reversal of the Christ role, Terry instead hands the possibility of redemption back to Ralph, who must earn forgiveness on his own merits. In a sense, this is a greater gift than forgiveness, as it gives Ralph the opportunity for personal growth.

King has described Holly as one of his favorite characters. She is thin with short hair and graying bangs. She made her first appearance in Mr. Mercedes and the two follow-up novels in the series, all of which feature Bill Hodges. Holly embodies the trope of the brilliant but eccentric detective alongside such well-known characters as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Like these iconic characters, Holly has very little in the way of a character arc: The focus is on how the detective uses her peculiar powers to solve the mystery.

The detective in the detective mystery genre typically has some unusual power of understanding or observation that makes them superior to ordinary people at solving crimes. Holly appears to have OCD and anxiety, both of which, the novel implies, contribute to her extreme meticulousness and attention to detail. Sometimes the traits that make for good detectives—at least in fiction—also interfere with a character’s ability to interact with other people. In Holly’s case, they contribute to her being insecure, anxious, and unnecessarily self-deprecating.

When Holly arrives on the scene, Ralph takes on the role of “Watson”—the foil who serves up the opportunity for the detective to explain her conclusions and the meanings of the various clues she uncovers.

The district attorney is young for his position—only 35—with short black hair and a cowlick that sticks up in back. It gives him a resemblance to Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. Unlike Ralph, Samuels has no doubts at all about the arrest and consequently feels that cutting a few corners can’t make a difference. He hasn’t learned, as Ralph has, that even smart people can make mistakes.

Although Samuels begins as an antagonist, he is not a villain. As evidence mounts that Terry was innocent, Samuels is honest and intelligent enough to have doubts and to regret his role in the death of a possibly innocent man. At the end of the story, when he accepts his own culpability in Terry’s death, he seeks redemption by choosing not to run for reelection. Instead, he puts out his shingle as a defense attorney, filling the void left by Howie Gold’s death—to which Samuels also indirectly contributed. He cuts his hair, losing the cowlick that made him look so childlike, in a symbol of his increased maturity.

Ollie Peterson copes with the aftermath of his younger brother Frankie’s murder by taking control of his environment. He cleans the house, does the dishes, and takes over funeral arrangements for his mother after her death. However, Ollie is only an adolescent, and the weight of adult responsibilities is too much to carry. Overwhelmed, he finally finds an outlet for his grief and rage through murdering Terry.

Jack Hoskins is small and prematurely gray. He is the worst cop in the precinct—lazy, incompetent, petty, and resentful. He drinks too much, and he has a particular grudge against Ralph, blaming Ralph for the fact that he didn’t get a promotion he wanted. The laziness and the drinking are the reason Hoskins winds up alone at a crime scene, where the outsider is able to poison him with its touch and gain access to his mind, using Hoskins’s terror of skin cancer to control him.