Joyland
Joyland (literally: Pleasure Land ) is a novel by Stephen King , the original of which was published on June 4, 2013 by Hard Case Crime Verlag. The German translation by Hannes Riffel was published by Heyne Verlag on June 17, 2013 .
content
The 21-year-old student Devin Jones wants to earn money during his semester break. Through a newspaper advertisement he comes across a job offer in an amusement park. After an interview he gets the job and from now on is employed as a “happy helper” or better said “girl for everything” and from then on cleans the various rides, repaints walls and wears “the fur” from now on. Devin only learns what this means when it comes to this for the first time. "The fur" is a dog costume and is based on the park's mascot, "Howie the Happy Hound". Wearing the fur turns out to be very sweaty and none of the employees can stay in the costume for more than 15 minutes. Nevertheless, Devin manages to wear the costume up to twelve times a day and thus entertain the children.
On his first day at work, a fortune teller predicts an encounter with a girl and an encounter with a boy who is said to have a dog. Shortly after the start, Devin does indeed meet the girl whom he is able to save from death by suffocation with a Heimlich maneuver .
Subsequently, Devin deals with the statements of various park employees that the ghost train is haunted. Together with his freshly hired colleagues Tom Kennedy and Erin Cook, he investigates the ghost train and finds out that a young woman was murdered there a few years ago. The killer can be seen in many photos from the park, but you can only see a tattoo on his forearm. His face is nowhere to be seen. The topic was reported extensively in the local newspapers at the time, but the young woman's headband was retouched from the published photos. This should help expose the killer during interrogation. Various park employees who have ridden the ghost train report to Devin independently of one another that they saw the ghost of the young woman and that he wore a blue headband. Since this information was always under lock and key, they must have actually seen the woman. When Devin tells Tom and Erin about his research one evening, the three of them decide to take a trip on the ghost train the next day. While Devin and Erin can't see anything unusual about the ride, Tom reports after the ride that he saw the ghost. Tom is so shocked by this experience that he no longer wants to have anything to do with this case. Meanwhile, the summer vacation is over and Erin and Tom are returning to their universities. Devin decides to stay in the park and only return to studying in the spring. Shortly before leaving, Devin asks Erin to do further research at the university.
After the main season is over, Devin meets Annie and her wheelchair-bound son Mike on the beach. He had seen the boy on the beach every day since he started working in the park. Devin watches the mother try to fly a kite. After a few unsuccessful attempts by their mother, Devin offers to teach them to fly a kite. The three quickly become friends. When Annie moves away from the two for a short time, the boy explains to him that he is suffering from muscle wasting and will therefore die early. Devin quickly realizes that Mike has a clairvoyant ability similar to that of the clairvoyant in the park. Devin offers Annie to take Mike and her to Joyland for a day and manages to convince her of the idea.
A week later Tom and Erin come to Joyland to visit. Erin brings Devin a folder containing the results of research she did while studying. Among other things, she found out that the manner of murder in the ghost train can be linked to various other murders in recent years. She received various pictures from the landlady of the guesthouse next to Joyland, which had never appeared in the newspaper. With the help of a fellow student at the university, she had a picture of the murderer enlarged. On the enlargement you can see that the murderer's tattoo was only painted on and that he wanted to draw attention to this supposed body feature as a distraction. Devin takes the folder into his room and wants to look at it again later because he noticed something while looking at Erin, but he couldn't tell her what it was. The next day, Mike and Annie come to the park and agent Lane Hardy and Devin show them around the park all day. Devin notices that Lane unconsciously keeps pushing his hat from side to side. When he took out the folder with the pictures the next day, he noticed that the murderer from the ghost train had pushed his hat to one side or the other on each picture. Exactly at the same moment Lane Hardy calls him, who suspected that Devin had discovered him. He tells him that if Devin doesn't follow his instructions and goes to Joyland, he'll be standing in front of Annie's and Mike's house and will kill them both. Once there, Lane forces him to climb the Ferris wheel and they both get into the same gondola. Lane wants to kill Devin, but, driven by his curiosity, lets Devin tell the whole story. Lane is just about to shoot Dev, when he in turn is shot by Annie, who was once an art shooter. It turns out that Mike was warned by a ghost that night that Dev was in mortal danger.
Some time later, Dev was starting college when Annie gave him a surprise phone call and told him that Mike had died. Dev rushes back to Annie. As they did when they first met, they fly a kite that spreads Mike's ashes over the sea.
Individual evidence
- ^ About page of the book on the English language first publisher website of the publisher "Hard Case Crime". Retrieved April 19, 2019.
Web links
- official page
- Detailed information including a complete table of contents in KingWiki .
literature
- Stephen King, Joyland , Heyne, 2013, ISBN 978-3-453-26872-2