Stephen King’s new thriller ‘The Outsider’ is a witchy brew of crime, horror

There are plenty of shadowy, wormy supernatural goings-on in “The Outsider,” Stephen King’s new thriller.

Yet the most unsettling stuff — which will leave you uncomfortable when you devour this first-rate read — probes the monstrous side of human nature.

As in his recent Mr. Mercedes trilogy, King walks the line between police procedural and complete horror show in the timely “The Outsider” (Scribner, $30).

The novel touches on gender dynamics, sexual abuse, pedophilia and the dangers of mob mentality, though the sociopolitical aspects won’t leave you as shaken as its characters’ desperate existences.

Little League coach and teacher Terry Maitland is arguably the most popular man in the small Oklahoma town of Flint City, so it hurts everybody to their core when he’s arrested for the murder of 11-year-old Frank Peterson. The boy’s body is found in a park — throat ripped out, corpse sexually defiled — and Detective Ralph Anderson, whose own kid was coached by Maitland, makes a show of bringing the accused to justice.

Even with much evidence pointing to Maitland’s guilt, there’s equal indication he clearly didn’t do it, being out of town with colleagues when the crime occurred.

While Anderson and other law-enforcement types wrack their brains to figure this out, everybody’s lives get wrecked.

“Like measles, mumps or rubella, tragedy was contagious,” King writes.

This is Stephen King, so stuff gets very weird.

The author plumbs to the gloomy depths with his cast before letting off the gas and giving them — and readers — some needed hope.

There are shades of “It” in the evil that presents itself in “The Outsider.”

In King’s hands, real darkness is just as pervasive as the supernatural.