The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (2005, Unabridged, Compact Disc)

In 1981, two teenagers find a dead man sitting on the beach of a small island off the coast of Maine. The cause of his death and his identity as an out-of-towner from Colorado are ultimately established, but little else. Despite the coroner’s finding of no foul play, two journeymen reporters from the tiny local paper are convinced that the man has been murdered, a conviction they hold for 25 years. The novel, in which the reporters, now in their nineties, explain their rationale to a young graduate student interning at their paper, is engaging but has more to do with the difference between fiction and reality, the nature of investigative journalism, and the way in which an accomplished novelist can create an unverifiable, unsolveable crime from a selected set of ordinary facts than it does with providing answers. Some will find that a flaw, others, a profound statement. The versatile Jeffrey DeMunn reads in his own voice but lowers it considerably and gravels it up for the dialogue, transforming himself magically into a laconic, elderly New England islander.