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April 2016

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Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

I mentioned in my review of Mr. King’s On Writing that I’d never read one of his books. Well, at the Houston airport on Friday night, getting ready for the last leg of travel that would get me home from two weeks on vacation, I picked up Mr. Mercedes.

And so it begins. Because I guarantee that the next thing I’m doing after posting this review is reserving all of his books at the library.

Unbeknownst to me, Mr. Mercedes is the first novel in a trilogy. And thank goodness it’s the first; I’ve accidentally read the second novel in a series first before, and it SUCKS.

You know what doesn’t suck? This book. This book is fun. It’s disturbing (one male character has a VERY close relationship with his mother, for another. Also, you know, mass killing), and the antagonist is certainly unappealing, dropping the n-word fairly regularly. The premise is this: A man drives a car into a crowd, killing eight people, and is not caught. Det. Hodges, now retired, was on the case but wasn’t able to solve it. Six months post-retirement, he gets a letter from the killer. And so it goes.

I appreciated that this case wasn’t one that had been haunting the detective forever; it had really only been maybe a year (two at most) since the original crime was committed. So it was less ‘white whale’ and more ‘the one that got away.” There are interesting supporting characters, and plot twists that I didn’t see coming. Is that because I’m unfamiliar with Mr. King’s writing? Don’t know. Don’t care. I enjoyed the heck out of this book, and am actually pretty excited to pick up the second one from the library this week.

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