Line #18 Literature/Joyland


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/joyland_510x816_1355.jpg]]
2	Released in June 2013, ''Joyland'' is Creator/StephenKing's second novel for the Hard Case Crime imprint, following ''The Colorado Kid'' (2005). The novel is primarily a murder mystery/thriller, but considering who the author is, it should come as no surprise that there are significant supernatural elements involved, too.
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4	The novel is set in the summer and autumn of 1973 and follows Devin Jones, a twenty-one-year-old college student from New England who takes an extended summer job in a North Carolina amusement park (the Joyland of the title) after his first girlfriend breaks up with him, leaving him heartbroken. As Dev begins to make friends and learn about the carny way of life, he also becomes fascinated with an unsolved murder which took place in the park four years earlier, and the House of Horrors which is reputedly haunted by the victim's ghost.
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6	----
7	!!''Joyland'' provides examples of:
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9	* AccidentalHero: Dev maintains he is one, which is probably true.
10	* AloneWithThePsycho: Dev, at the climax of the novel.
11	* AmusementParkOfDoom: Subverted, all things considered. Even with the legacy of the murder hanging over it, Joyland is for the most part a happy and well-intentioned place [[spoiler:and the ghost that haunts the funhouse isn't malicious or deadly but just wants to 'move on'.]]
12	* BigBad: [[spoiler: Lane Hardy aka The Carny Killer, the amusement park employee Devin befriended who is actually the serial killer that has unintentionally trapped the ghost of Linda Gray in the amusement park ride. He believes Devin has figured out he was the killer and has been looking to confront him.]]
13	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Linda Gray's spirit is laid to rest and her murderer is finally discovered, but Mike eventually succumbs to his illness and dies. Oh, and Joyland ends up bankrupt two years after the events of the story]].
14	* CassandraTruth: [[spoiler:The Carny Killer flat out refuses to believe that Dev didn't figure out his identity until the very night the killer decided to confront him, since he knew Dev had been doing his own research for a while now]].
15	* ComingOfAgeStory: As well as being a mystery/thriller with supernatural undertones, the novel is very much this for Devin.
16	* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: The Carny Killer takes Dev for a midnight ride on the rickety Ferris Wheel while a hurricane blows in.
17	* CoolOldLady: Rozzie Gold and Mrs Shoplaw.
18	* ChekhovsSkill: Annie's exceptional marksmanship -- including the fact that she won numerous shooting trophies at summer camp in her teens, her hunting trips with her father, and her success at the Joyland shooting gallery despite not having practiced for years -- become very important when Dev ends up AloneWithThePsycho.
19	* DistantFinale: While narrating the story in 2013, Dev occasionally has cause to explain what's happened to him, Tom and Erin, and a few of the other characters in the intervening forty years.
20	* FacialHorror: In a vein very similar to what was once caused by a [[ImprovisedWeapon toaster]] in Literature/TheLangoliers, [[spoiler: Annie shoots the Carny Killer with a hunting rifle at the book's climax and just about vaporizes his face, palette, and upper jaw. As one might imagine, King's description of the resulting carnage ranks the perp's death among the highest in his mythos as far as the gruesome factor goes.]]
21	* FakeRussian: In-universe, Rozzie Gold when she's in character as Madame Fortuna.
22	* FirstLove: Wendy is Dev's. It seems like TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest, too: despite romances with [[spoiler:Annie]] and a classmate named Jennifer, Dev reveals in the DistantFinale that - despite being a hopeless romantic for whom marriage was a big priority - it took him ten years to settle down after Wendy broke up with him. Even into his sixties, he's still a little bitter about their break-up.
23	* ForegoneConclusion: [[spoiler:Since the story is narrated by Dev himself years after the facts, you already know from the start that he will be fine]].
24	* FormerTeenRebel: Played with - Annie actively tried to be a good PreachersKid as a teenager despite her lack of faith, but rebelled once she entered college as a young adult.
25	* FreudianExcuse: Dev's theory is that the Carny Killer murders his dates because he's unable to perform sexually. [[IdiotHero A theory he expresses to the killer's face,]] [[AloneWithThePsycho while they are alone together and the killer very much has the upper hand.]] [[spoiler:Annie arrives and shoots the guy before he makes any comment, so it remains speculation.]]
26	* GeniusBonus: One of Dev's favorite songs is "Cars Hiss By My Window" by The Doors, which starts "The cars hiss by my window/like the waves down on the beach (2x)/I got this girl beside me, but she's out of reach". Two out of three lines are an apt description of Dev's situation. [[spoiler:He does seem to have some interest in Erin, and although her being out of reach is not a major plot point, she says that, if it weren't for Tom, she'd be with Dev.]]
27	* GhostlyChill: Dev feels one in the House of Horrors when he reaches the spot where Linda Gray was murdered, but admits that this may be a result of suggestion rather than a genuine ghostly manifestation.
28	* GoofySuit: Dev is made to wear "the fur" -- a suit of the carnival's mascot, Howie. Despite the sweltering conditions he's forced to perform in, he generally has a positive experience from it given the reactions he garners from the kids.
29	* TheHero: Despite being a typical [[TheEveryman everyman]] in most respects, Dev ends up regarded as one by almost everybody, and for good reason. During his few months working at Joyland, Dev saves two lives - he prevents a little girl from choking and is on hand when a co-worker has a heart attack - and that's ''before'' he caught the serial killer who'd evaded justice for over a decade. (Although Erin and Annie played equally important roles in the latter.)
30	* ISeeDeadPeople:
31	** Just one manifestation of [[spoiler:Mike's]] powerful psychic abilities.
32	** [[spoiler:Tom]] is the only one of the three friends to see Linda Gray's ghost during their trip through the House of Horrors; years later, he's still angry and confused about why she appeared to him and no-one else.
33	* {{Jerkass}}: Eddie, one of the old workers at the park. [[spoiler:[[HiddenDepths It turns out he used to have a family.]] His daughter was hit by a car and died alone and his wife ended up leaving him not long after. After Dev saves him from his heart attack, he matter of factly says "[[UnwantedRescue You should have let me died]]. That way I could be with my daughter".]]
34	* KissOfLife: Dev does it [[spoiler:to Eddie]] after he has a heart attack, though he ''really'' doesn't want to.
35	* MeaningfulName: The fact that Annie is a crack shot leads to a number of ''Theatre/AnnieGetYourGun'' references. Even further {{Lampshaded}} when she plays a game at Joyland's shooting gallery, which is named Annie Oakley's Shootin' Gallery.
36	* NiceGuy:
37	** Tom Kennedy easily wins over everyone he meets by the sheer power of his niceness.
38	** [[spoiler:Dev admits that Erin's second husband is probably one, but can't bear to meet him even years after Tom's death.]]
39	* NightmareSequence: The night after he saved [[spoiler:Eddie]] from a heart attack, Dev has a dream in which he has to do the same to Fred Dean, but the moment he tries mouth to mouth resuscitation, [[SpidersAreScary spiders]] come crawling out of Fred's mouth and into Dev's.
40	* OfficialCouple: Dev's co-workers and housemates, Tom and Erin, very quickly become an item. [[spoiler:The DistantFinale reveals that they got HappilyMarried, but that Tom died of a brain tumor in his late thirties and that Erin has by now remarried.]]
41	* OurGhostsAreDifferent: Most people who see Linda Gray's ghost assume she is either a slightly creepy waxwork model in the House of Horrors (due entirely to her outstretched hands and pleading look -- she's certainly not blood-covered or semi-transparent), and she seems to look more or less like a living person when she appears. [[spoiler:Dev never sees her for himself, so he (and the reader) have to rely on other characters' reports of her manifestations.]] The same goes for the ghost of [[spoiler:Eddie. According to Mike, he looked just like a regular human, not white and/or transparent]].
42	* PetTheDog: [[spoiler:Eddie has a second heart attack, dying the same night Dev has been brought to Joyland by Linda Gray's killer. His ghost warns Mike about it and it is thanks to him that Annie was able to show up just in time to save Dev.]]
43	* PreachersKid: Annie's estranged father is a popular televangelist who denounced her as Type 2 (Diabolic) after she became a HardDrinkingPartyGirl, quit the NRA, joined the American Atheist Society and got pregnant from a one-night stand. Annie is really more of a Type 3 (Neutral) in reality - or at least, she becomes one after settling down to care for Mike.
44	* PsychicPowers:
45	** Rozzie Gold, a.k.a. Madame Fortuna, is Joyland's resident fortune teller with a minor but genuine talent for her art: 90% of what she says is bullshit based on ColdReading, but the other 10% is eerily accurate and impossible to fake.
46	** [[spoiler:Mike]] is a genuinely powerful psychic.
47	** The fact that [[spoiler:Tom]] is able to see Linda Gray's ghost when [[spoiler:Dev and Erin]] don't might mean that he's a weak psychic like Rozzie - especially since sudden flashes of natural psychic ability in otherwise non-psychic people are a common theme in King's books.
48	* RedHerring:
49	** [[spoiler:One of the victims attributed to the Carny Killer doesn't fit the pattern - she was of a different racial background (a black girl, whereas all the others were white blondes) and was raped before her throat was cut, unlike the others. It's implied that her place in the pattern threw the police off the trail of the real killer. Dev and Erin discount her from their list of victims; although it doesn't help them identify the killer, it provides a clearer pattern and possible motive.]]
50	** There are some hints that [[spoiler:Eddie wears gloves to cover up the tattoos that the killer had in the pictures. When Dev removes his gloves, he discovers that Eddie just has psoriasis. Later on, the tattoos themselves are revealed to be red herrings; the killer used temporary tattoos to throw off the police.]]
51	* TheReveal: [[spoiler:The Carny Killer is revealed to be Lane Hardy, an employee at Joyland whom Dev befriended]].
52	* SerialKiller: "The Carny Killer".
53	* SexyPackaging: Perhaps done intentionally given the pulp throwback style that Hard Case Crime specializes in, the cover puts emphasis on one of the "Hollywood Girls" wearing a short dress which, while not inaccurate, has little to do with the main story. Even more blatant is the [[http://i.imgur.com/UVfwUGU.jpg limited edition's cover]] which features a woman in a bikini wielding a shotgun and has nothing to do with the plot.
54	* SpeedSex: The first time Dev has sex [[spoiler:with Annie]], he lasts for about nine seconds. Luckily, he's soon ready for a second time... which lasts for four minutes. Third time is the charm.
55	* TakeThat: To religious fanatics with HolierThanThou mentality, like Annie's father.
56	-->'''Mrs. Shoplaw''': I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world. Religion is supposed to comfort.

Context Literature / Joyland