📺 Haven (2010)
Based on novel
Haven is a supernatural drama television series that premiered on Syfy on July 9, 2010, and ran for five seasons before concluding in December 2015. Developed by Jim Dunn and Sam Ernst, the show is loosely based on Stephen King's 2005 mystery novel The Colorado Kid. However, the adaptation takes significant creative liberties, using the novel primarily as a springboard rather than a direct blueprint. While King's book is a grounded, non-supernatural mystery about an unsolved death, Haven transforms the premise into a full-fledged paranormal drama centered on a small Maine town plagued by generational supernatural afflictions known as "The Troubles."
The series stars Emily Rose as FBI Special Agent Audrey Parker, who arrives in the fictional coastal town of Haven, Maine, on a routine case and quickly discovers that the town is a magnet for strange and dangerous phenomena. She partners with local police detective Nathan Wuornos (Lucas Bryant), who suffers from a rare condition that prevents him from feeling physical sensation, and later teams up with the roguish smuggler Duke Crocker (Eric Balfour). The show was filmed on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada, and was an American-Canadian co-production. Over its five-season run, Haven built a dedicated fanbase drawn to its blend of case-of-the-week supernatural mysteries and an overarching mythology about Audrey's mysterious origins and her cyclical connection to the town.
The connection to The Colorado Kid is most evident in the series' early episodes and its foundational lore. In the novel, two elderly newspapermen, Vince Teague and Dave Bowie, recount the unsolved case to a young intern. Haven incorporates these characters — played by Richard Donat and John Dunsworth — as recurring figures who run the local paper, the Haven Herald, and serve as keepers of the town's secrets. The mysterious death of the Colorado Kid himself becomes a key piece of the show's backstory, though the series reimagines the circumstances and significance of his death to fit its supernatural framework. Beyond these touchpoints, Haven is very much its own creation, weaving together elements of small-town intrigue, romantic tension, and Stephen King's broader thematic preoccupations with hidden darkness beneath placid surfaces.
The Colorado Kid is a mystery novel by American writer Stephen King, published by the Hard Case Crime imprint in October 2005. The book was initially issued as a paperback-only edition by the specialty crime and mystery publishing house, marking King's first work for the imprint. The cover art was created by Glen Orbik, a frequent Hard Case Crime illustrator known for his pulp-style paintings.
The novel is structured as a story within a story. On a small island off the coast of Maine, two veteran newspapermen, Vince Teague and Dave Bowie, recount a decades-old unsolved mystery to their young intern, Stephanie McCann. In 1980, the body of an unidentified man was found on a beach. The investigation that followed yielded a series of strange, seemingly contradictory clues — a Russian coin, a pack of cigarettes missing one cigarette, a stomach full of fish despite a ferry crossing — but no clear resolution. Over a year later, the man was finally identified as a Colorado resident, yet the core mysteries of how and why he died remained unanswered.
Unlike most of King's work, The Colorado Kid contains no supernatural elements. It is a deliberate homage to the classic hardboiled mystery genre, and its central theme is the nature of mystery itself — the idea that some questions simply do not have tidy answers. The novel's unconventional, open-ended conclusion divided readers upon release but has since been appreciated as a meditation on storytelling and the human need for resolution.
The Colorado Kid gained renewed attention when it was loosely adapted into the Syfy television series Haven, which premiered in 2010. The show took only the barest elements of the novel — a small Maine coastal town, a mysterious death, and a pair of newspapermen — and built an entirely new supernatural mythology around them. Hard Case Crime reissued the novel in an illustrated paperback edition in May 2019.