The Outsider: Hunt for a Ubiquitous Murderer

Slow, quiet streets and neighborhoods viewed from above amidst a piano music begins the series, The Outsider, based on the novel by Stephen King. The slow orchestra continues as a middle-aged man and his dog pass a white, back-windowless truck. The dog sniffs a blood line at the passenger door’s base and takes off toward a shocking revelation.

Detectives later surround the murder site the dog has suddenly ran toward. With that, a small town’s mild existence erupts in the wake of a child’s mysterious murder, with one key leading suspect in episode one. The main characters here are a lead investigator, Ralph Anderson, and a beginning lead suspect, Terry Maitland.

Then, the scream of the victim’s mother rings out the injustice to her darkened street as Anderson relays the news of her loss. Anderson’s own grief after the loss of his son some time earlier comes to a front here, spurring his fierce determination against Maitland. Maitland himself is a shocking suspect as he is a community baseball coach and a father to two young girls. 

What is the truth of Maitland’s guilt or innocence? Was he a willing or perhaps unwitting participant in young Frankie Peterson’s murder? Arrested publicly at one of his coached baseball games, detained, interrogated and arraigned, the gruesome story is slowly revealed through the flashbacks and testimonies of the town’s citizens looking back on their memories of the other characters’ actions on the fateful day. Everyone’s a suspect and all is uncertain between the outsiders and the citizens in this addictive murder mystery series.