End of Watch by Stephen King

This is the third and final book in the saga of retired Detective Kermit William Hodges. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and check out my reviews of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. Yay self-promotion! Or even read the books, they're good.

About seven years have passed since Brady Hartsfield maliciously ran over people waiting for a job fair with a stolen Mercedes. For most of that time he's been in the traumatic brain injury wing of Kiner Memorial Hospital due to getting walloped by Hodges' partner Holly Gibney at the scene of his subsequent attempt at mass murder. Now the presumably brain-dead Brady seems to be inducing a number of suicides, and the same defunct video game system is found near each victim.

Soon after the first suicide is discovered, Bill Hodges, now in his late 60s, gets diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Now he's facing a supernatural killer at the same time as being faced with his own mortality. Jerome's sister Barbara almost gets herself run over while using a Zappit. A particular demo screen on the handheld game consoles has a hypnotizing effect on the player, which is a surefire metaphor for how our mobile devices suck us in. Brady has found a way to modify the game's qualities so that someone's mind becomes vulnerable enough for him to invade it, so he's able to control a body that isn't paralyzed like his own.

This series had not used supernatural elements up to now, but the mind control is brought up gradually. The first few times the reader encounters the characters that Brady is controlling such as Dr. Felix Babineau and Al "Library Al" Brooks, they just seem to be oddly loyal to him or brainwashed. But soon they start acting or speaking like the maniac we got to know uncomfortably well in Mr. Mercedes. This is a testament to King's storytelling prowess; any time a situation is joined in media res and doesn't completely make sense, just keep reading and it will be clearly explained later. Sometimes, his dedication to clarity feels overbearing, like when he recaps events from the previous two books thoroughly enough that one wouldn't have had to read them. Or when he takes half a page to have Holly or Jerome explain a bit of modern technology that would be obvious to the younger set, but I'm sure this would be helpful to the readers who are closer to Hodges' age.

I thought this was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. It left me imagining a TV series that could cover the entire storyline of Hodges and his partners. Although the track record of King TV adaptations lately, namely Under the Dome and 11.22.63 have been less than stellar, I think some kind of take on Mr Mercedes and its sequels could work out well. Any Stephen King fan would be happy with the way the books turned out.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

I picked up this book because I was in the mood for a time travel story, and that's basically all I knew about it going in. The concept of a time-hopping serial killer sounded pretty promising, but unfortunately The Shining Girls doesn't do enough with it, and the various characters and time periods become jumbled.

The book is written in third person but each chapter is from a different point of view; from protagonist Kirby Mazrachi to her friend Dan the detective, to the killer named Harper Curtis, and a few inconsequential side characters, we get their name and what date the chapter takes place on. Sometimes alternating with multiple voices can be beneficial to a story, but in this case it all seemed scattered. I can say that Beukes did admirable research into the details of Chicago's different time periods, but that doesn't make the story great.

All we learn about the Depression-era drifter Harper is that he loves to slice up people with his knife. He has a list of women living in different years who he feels are destined to meet their end, but he also indiscriminately kills anyone who gets in his way, and then jumps to another time before anyone knows how the massacre occured.

Kirby is the one victim who survives Harper's attack because her dog gets in the way of his knife. So she is trying to track Harper down with Dan's help, all while a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Tribune is doing a profile about Kirby and the life-changing assault. Kirby is not a fully dimensional character either, only motivated by wanting justice to be served to the would-be murderer who left ugly scars on her belly.

I'm going to admit my mind wandered while reading this book, because the constantly shifting perspectives and decades became confusing. (This is probably why I'll never be a professional reviewer.) It didn't seem to be clearly explained how Harper was able to time travel other than using a portal somewhere, or why he has the list of victims he calls the "shining girls". (According to Wikipedia, he "must murder the 'shining girls' in order to continue his travels." I didn't pick up on that and I still don't see why continuing to time travel is a good enough reason to become a serial killer.)

So I didn't find much to recommend about The Shining Girls. It felt like it was clumsily building to some greater purpose that never came about, all elaborate table-setting with no feast.

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

As I mentioned in my review of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes, that was the first of a trilogy. Finders Keepers is the second part of the series but the recurring characters don't appear immediately, and it doesn't feel entirely organic when they do.

The story starts off in 1978 in the home of acclaimed author John Rothstein. He is known for a trilogy of books (hey that sounds familiar) about a man named Jimmy Gold. Morris Bellamy, who mostly loved the Gold novels, is quite upset with the way the third book ended, and ends up killing Rothstein. With a few accomplices, Bellamy gets away with money-filled envelopes and several Moleskine journals from Rothstein's safe. He later kills the two accomplices and realizes the journals are filled with unpublished writing that includes two more Jimmy Gold novels, which is more valuable to Bellamy than the cash. He ends up hiding both the journals and money in a trunk buried near his house, and goes to jail for a crime he doesn't even remember committing, rather than the robbery and homicides.


That may seem like an exhaustive plot but we're just getting started. About thirty years later, a boy name Pete Saubers lives in Bellamy's former home and finds the buried trunk. Since his family is having financial trouble, he decided to anonymously send the cash to his own address, a couple hundred dollars at a time. Meanwhile, Morris Bellamy has been in jail but happens to be up for parole. Once Bellamy realizes the journals are not where he left them he's on the warpath. When Pete's cash runs out, he tries to find a way to make money off the Rothstein writings but it's not as easy as he hoped, and his sister gets in touch with Ret. Det. Bill Hodges because Hodges helped a friend of hers.


So Hodges and his acquaintances Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson from Mr. Mercedes finally get involved in the story at this point, and it just isn't handled as smoothly as in the first book, in which they were way more personally invested in the crime. I feel like King had the story of the murderous literary fan in mind and he shoehorned in the established characters. Morris Bellamy will remind readers of Annie Wilkes from King's Misery since she was quite upset with the author of her favorite books, except Annie wasn't as blatantly bloodthirsty as Bellamy. He's also not as interesting of an antagonist as the mother-obsessed Brady Hartsfield from Mr. Mercedes. In this volume Hartsfield is hinted to have gained telekinesis, a seemingly common King trope, but that does keep me interested to see where things will go in the finale of this trilogy. Finders Keepers was compelling enough while I was reading it, but by the end it didn't leave a lasting impression and was ultimately filler.

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

I have been a long time fan of Stephen King, who has earned a reputation as horror writer, but I think he's just as compelling when stepping outside of that genre. Mr. Mercedes is what King calls "his first hard-boiled detective book," being the story of a retired police detective who is taunted by a killer who got away with his crime.

Bill Hodges is deep in self loathing and considering using his father's revolver to end his life when he gets a creepy letter. The writer alleges to be behind a vehicular massacre that occurred a year earlier, mowing down a crowd waiting to get in to a job fair. The Mercedes-Benz used in the crime was stolen from a woman named Olivia Trelawney, driven to suicide from guilt when she became convinced that she left her keys in the car. Hodges falls in love with Olivia's daughter Janey while she helps him unravel the case, and a teenager named Jerome who lives in the neighborhood also provides some ahead-of-his-age wisdom.

The reader gets almost as much time in the mind of the retired detective as we do with Brady Hartsfield, who in the letter to Hodges refers to himself as the "perk" who ran down those unfortunate people. Brady, like Psycho's Norman Bates, is obsessed with his mother to an unhealthy degree, and gets headaches that signify his murderous urges. Brady works both in an ice cream truck and at an electronics store in the local mall, so he's the type of bad guy who hides in plain sight. Most of the suspense of this novel arises because we know from Brady's chapters exactly what he plans to do, and subsequently we see how Hodges is just a step behind.

This cat and mouse aspect keeps the story engaging, and the characters all have believable personalities. Brady has unwittingly given Hodges a reason to live instead of making the "fat ex-cop" end it all. Hodges and his companions make some human errors during their investigations, and Brady causes some deaths that he didn't intend but still delights in. King gives us plenty of reasons to hate Brady Hartfield, but a flashback gives him a little humanity as well. At the risk of giving too much away, I thought it was interesting that the two main characters never come face to face like you might expect.

The author says this book is the start of a trilogy, which surprised me because it's rare that Stephen King will write sequels, with the exceptions of The Dark Tower series and the recent (and disappointing) sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. I enjoyed Mr. Mercedes, and I definitely look forward to reading the continuing adventures of Detective Hodges in Finder Keepers and the upcoming End of Watch.

For more about Stephen King, try stephenking.com.