Mr. Mercedes: A Novel

I love this new and improved Stephen King 2.0. I am not going to rehash the publisher's summary or go too deep into the plot as some consider writing about ANY plot points as spoilers. There are no spoilers here, just my opinion of the type of readers that would enjoy Mr. Mercedes as much as I did. In my opinion, there are three major buckets of Stephen King fans, A) Readers that love his earlier works that featured densely written supernatural stories that kindled the type of mental terrorism that innovated the genre. Novels that are deep in character and plot line development to the point they easily reach the level of an 800+ page epic. (See: The Stand ) B) Readers that love his lighter works that loan themselves to the psychological thrillers of the physical and mortal world that are so terrorizing, they wish it was due to a supernatural entity. Novels that don't have as much depth (relatively speaking) or number of characters, but still great reads. (See: Misery ) C) Readers who just enjoy to be entertained and terrorized by the master of horror, regardless of the believability of the plot's premise or source of the fear. For the hardcore fans that reside in segment A, I think they will feel Mr. Mercedes is a well written novel, but a rare miss by the author they have grown to love. That would be an unfortunate mis-characterization if readers think Mr. Mercedes is a miss due to the lack of page turning details developing voluminous characters and minuscule details of their surroundings. The development of the main characters in Mr. Mercedes was more that enough to keep us engaged and on our toes with a truly unpredictable plot. Protagonist Bill Hodges is definitely not a sympathetic character nor a character that can be simply introduced to the reader. We are taken through his very tough existence to see him as a loathing underdog and the city's only hope to stop the sadistic plans of the antagonist, Brady Hartsfield. Also, King does a great job still making use and giving depth to the small supporting cast which includes Hodges sidekick, Jermome, Brady's mother Deborah, and Jannelle Patterson - the sister of the woman whose Mercedes was used by Brady in the attack that starts it all. Fans in segments B and C will definitely feel the same heart-racing thrill that they have come to know from Stephen King. Mr. Mercedes is totally unpredictable, fast starting, and interlaced with many newer 21st century references that many will find refreshing. Mr. Mercedes lends more to a thriller where a lot of the plot plays out through the web - a new twist that makes me love Stephen King 2.0 even more. This was a great novel that is much easier to read than many of Stephen King's earlier works. It will definitely not be a disappointment for fans who are open to Kin's expanding range of finding new, and more 21st century ways to keep us horrified, entertained, and guessing. I definitely recommend this to all King fans and those who may be new to his books. This review was of an advanced reading copy.

To write this review in a way that gives this book (and its competitors) a fair reading, I need to ignore the fact that Mr King has already published close to 60 world wide best selling novels and that he is one of the biggest selling novelists the world has ever seen. I also need to ignore the fact that he has penned some of the finest supernatural and alternative fantasy stories ever published and that some of his works are at times close to beautiful, moving, pure, literature. So now I can treat this new release as a single, standalone novel and I will pretend that I have never heard of Stephen King. So I sit down, turn on my glorious Kindle DX and I commence reading. The story starts like this... Augie Odenkirk is unemployed, single, with no dependants, but also no short term career prospects. He meets a single mom desperate for work at a small town exposition promoting local employment. Within a scattering of pages and a few hundred words, the reader finds themselves compelled to learn more of these two innocents, struggling daily against the economic forces - and that of fate itself - which have taken such a cruel toll on their lives. And to wish them well. Of course, some of us may want them to find happiness and ride off together into their own sunset. Waiting in line in the pre-dawn darkness, however, they are met and destroyed by the modern day face of evil. The reader is already attached to the characters in question - the trilogy of victims we are introduced to are all so beautifully drawn and created by Mr King that within a handful of pages you are shocked and almost moved to tears by the drama that unfolds before your eyes. We subsequently meet the hero of the tale - Retired Detective Hodges. On a superficial level it is easy to imagine flaws in the book where none exist. The good guys are obvious and the bad guy is, too. One can't call this book a mystery, its more of a totally modern techno thriller update on the eternal battle between good and evil. Mr King's legion of Constant Readers will be very familiar (and comfortable) with this theme. Emotional attachment has always been a strong point of Mr King and this book is no exception. The bad guy is despicably bad and the good guy is so human (ie: flawed) that he is in our hearts by the end of part one. As the story progresses, we get to know the book's characters even more closely and we see the huge mistake Brady has made by taking on Hodges. The plot and pacing are perfect. Mr King has always left traces of addictive caffeine scattered across his pages so that it is almost impossible to stop reading until he says it's ok to stop reading, and this latest thriller is no exception. The suspense builds chapter by chapter. With the increased awareness the reader has of uber-sicko Brady Hartsfield, the more terrified they will become of what his plans for impending chaos he has in store. On a personal level, it appears that he lacks social, moral and even ethical boundaries, which makes him a very dangerous individual. Ret. Det. Hodges, if only you knew what you are up against. But the hero of this tale is retired, as we know. His only child is a fully grown and mature woman. His wife is dead. Being involved in this case again - albeit unofficially - has given his life some direction. One wonders even at an early stage of the book, how the story will end, and who will survive. Selfishly, one hopes for Hodges to live to fight another day, at least for the reason that Mr King will have to give us at least one more book!!!!! The ending to this new age techno thriller is fine. It leaves the reader wanting more, with the potential for a sequel featuring at least one of the charscters. Mr King led the reader a merry dance before the final page, so we were never sure what was going to happen. My heart was in my chest at least once during the final stanza and i am glad that my fears and assumptions were wrong. So once more, the world owes Mr King a huge thank you for providing another strong example of his story telling abilities. The only complaint i have is that there was no mention of his Constant Readers in his afterword. BFN Greggorio!!!!!

Loved the suspense and story telling of this novel. I started with The Outsider and found out that a character in that book is introduced in this trilogy. Needless to say, I’ve gotten the Bill Hodges Trilogy to read everything in the correct order.

I'm not a big horror fan, but Stephen King has always had the ability to hook the reader on the first page, so I've read my fair share of his novels and short story collections. MR. MERCEDES isn't really horror anyway. King's son, Joe Hill, must have influenced him to try the mystery genre, and that's what this book is. King hooks us with these two likable characters, Augie Odenkirk and Janice Cray, who are both standing in the rain waiting for a job fair to open. A thousand people are to be hired and they're both desperate for work. Janice is so desperate she's brought her baby with her and it needs to be changed and fed. Augie loans her his sleeping bag. Just when she's all set, a Mercedes plows into the crowd. We're hoping Augie, our hero, and Janice and her baby aren't hurt, but that rat King won't let us have our way. So then who's this story about? King is a lot like John Sandford in that he lets you follow the killer throughout the book. This killer is a computer repairman, part-time ice cream salesman (That's how he gets to know the real hero of the book, a retired cop, named Bill Hodges, who's thinking of eating his father's hand gun). Brady Hartfield has seen him through the window. and he intuitively knows that's what Bill is doing. So he writes Bill a letter, signing it Mr. Mercedes. (BTW, that's a flaw in the book. Newspapers don't give serial murderers nicknames anymore like the Zodiac killer or Son of Sam. That's what they want, publicity. If they do, they'll hear from the police.) Brady's new target is Bill Hodges, and he wants to drive him to suicide, just as he's done with the owner of the Mercedes. Brady Hartsfield is one sick puppy. He's got an Oedipus complex for one thing. He still lives with his mother, and he's got a man cave in the basement where he torments his future victims via the dark Internet. He's trying to get Bill to sign on to a site called “Debbie's Blue Umbrella”, but actually he's done Bill a favor; Bill now has a reason to live besides watching Judge Judy on TV: to track down this monster before he hurts somebody else. Often divorced Bill also meets the owner of the Mercedes's sister, Janey. Mr. Mercedes has sent her sister a letter similar to the one Bill received. Bill is 62; Janey is 44 and beautiful. For some reason, she likes him, despite the age disparity. She hasn't had much luck with men, and Bill is a very nice man. She wants in on the search for the killer. So does Jerome, Bill's lawn boy, who also happens to be an all-American boy bent on being accepted at an Ivy league school. But he likes to pretend he's a field hand around Bill as he's an African-American. He's also adept at computers, and he helps Bill check out “Debbie's Blue Umbrella.” The last member of the group is Holly, whose mother was Mercedes owner Olivia Trelawney's sister. Holly ia forty-four years old but her mother, along with other bullies, has driven her to bat city She's got more ticks than a Rocky Mountain forest, but she's also computer literate, and she's brave and smart, despite her condition. This book will keep you on the edge of your chair until the climax is over, and you'll keep reading to find out what happened to everybody after that. It even ends with a cliffhanger of sorts. Usually that's a no-no for me, but I would have read the next King mystery anyway.

This is an amazing book for the followers of Stephen King. A brilliant turn of events, well developed cast of characters, a captivated riveting plot, the settings were well organized, and a combination of mystery, crime, thriller all in one book. The story was unpredictable, fast beginning, and entwined with many new 21st century references to still keep the reader entertained, horrified, and guessing.<br/><br/>The book Mr. Mercedes will not disappoint most of King’s fans. He has not lost his touch. He still delivered abstract characters, thrilling plot, great dialogue, an aging, overweight retired detective hero, a misguided bad villain, and King created three entirely unusual characters as investigators. We have Bill Hodges, the retired detective, Jerome, only seventeen and a friend of Bill’s and than there’s Holly, who is a woman in her forties and has a severe OCD disorder with a crabby mother who will not let the apron strings go. Brady is the villain who is also attached to his mother’s (Deborah) with apron strings in many strange ways….<br/><br/>The base of the story begins with retired Detective Bill Hodges who sits at home all day depressed with a loaded gun until he receives a letter in the mail from the Brady who stole a car and drove into a crowd of people at a mid Western City Job Fair, killing eight people, injuring others and escapes the scene. This crime happened over a year ago and was the last case Detective Hodges worked on when he retired from the force. The case was never solved and left to his now ex-partner to investigate, however it became a cold case because after awhile the police force set it aside and worked on more pressing cases.<br/><br/>Now Brady is back and wants Bill Hodges to commit suicide like the woman who owned the Mercedes he stole to run down those people. Brady managed to get into the life of the woman who owned the Mercedes and made her feel like it was all her fault so the guilt she felt got to be too much for her. As time passed, Brady has been watching Hodges and knows he is depressed and wants to mastermind another suicide. Brady hasn’t planned all the events but he knows how he wants it to end. Through twists and turns, right and wrong, and Brady’s unpredictable actions leads the reader into the path of failures, mistakes, crimes committed on both sides and bonds that developed through the story…..<br/><br/>The climax was in fact relentlessly suspenseful and wonderfully unpredictable, while the final revelation struck me emotionally, but fulfilled to the very end. The story was still bone-chilling and I enjoyed and loved every word on every page with highlights….

The book immediately hooked me with it's opening chapter. King is able to make me connect to two characters I'll only know for about ten pages, and never see again, because by the end of the chapter, they'll be dead. In fact the characters are the strongest thing in this book, even the killer himself, which surprised me that King revealed so early on who it was, had me sympathizing with him just a bit. I swear it was only for a paragraph or two, because this guy, the titular Mr. Mercedes, is really messed up. And our main character Bill Hodges is also a thrill. Because he's 64 years old there are no car chases, or gun fights, rather, a majority of the mystery is solved through the use of computers, giving this book a very Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vibe, which just so happens to be one of my favorite books. The mystery itself is also very intriguing. Like I said above, King reveals the killer within the first few chapters, giving us his perspective on how the events carried out and what he was feeling during them. And while this surprised me at first, I believe this was the correct way to go. Giving us Mr. Mercedes view on everything really helped to sell how broken as a man he was, and really without it all, we wouldn't have any connection to what happened in the climax of the book. Most mysteries try to get you to play along, figure out who the killer is. King doesn't do that, he's here to tell you something, not hold your hand and present all the clues to you. He's smarter than that. Despite how filled this book is, if you like action in your mystery, you may be bored here. There is a bit of not-of-the-blue romance between two characters, but after the awkward-ness of 'Okay, I guess they're together," I came to actually enjoy the relationship. There are even a few moments in here where I was close to tears due to the fate of a certain character. So this book may not be for everyone. The insta-love, and there are a few moments towards the end where the plot begins to drag a bit, and a weird one-chapter perspective from an officer we'd never met, but it's over quickly and a little does come out of it. The climax wraps up in a bit of an unexpected manner, Bill is actually hardly involved, but again, he's 64 years old, so it'd be unrealistic to think he'd be able to hunt down the killer himself. This is the story of several people, and it's presented in a very realistic fashion, Even at the end, Hodges isn't present with a medal of honor or recognition, he's retired, and what he technically did to solve this mystery was illegal. He doesn't end up in jail, but he's far from the hero at the end. This book will definitely convince me to pick up more Stephen King sooner rather than later.

Did I like this book? No, not really. Was it a bad book? No, not really. Kemper's review from June 2016 just about says everything I would say. I picked this up because I loved meeting Holly in The Outsider and wanted to get her whole back story before moving onto the other books about her. I stayed with it out of stubbornness. The storyline was intriguing but I didn't care for Bill Hodges much. That he got a hot, wealthy younger woman to fall for him instantly, and that Holly was so enamored by him really click for me. He wasn't necessarily likeable and, though King TELLS us he was a great cop in his day, he had me wanting to SCREAM at his terrible choices throughout most of the book. I also should have looked at trigger warnings. Brady's relationship with his mom was obviously problematic and disturbing, but Frankie... that scene is still stuck with me 😭 It hurt my heart! Will I still be reading Finders Keepers and End of Watch before moving onto Holly? Yes. But hopefully more enthusiastically!

Bill Hodges is a recently retired policeman. He hasn't had a very successful retirement so far as he never developed any hobbies. He basically sits in his recliner and watches daytime television while brooding over the case he couldn't solve before he retired. His only friend is the teenage boy who mows his lawn and helps him with errands. The case that he broods over is the Mercedes murder. While a line of people waited for a job fair to open, out of the early morning fog came a Mercedes, plowing into the crowd. Eight people were killed, including a mother and baby, and many more injured. The driver calmly drove away afterwards. Then something unimaginable happens. The man who drove the Mercedes that day contacts Hodges. He starts a cat and mouse game with him, daring him to catch him before he kills again. Bill doesn't want to turn this over to his ex-partner but is determined to catch the killer himself. His only allies are Jerome, the teenage boy, Jenny, the sister of the woman who owned the Mercedes and Holly, her niece who is on the spectrum but a computer whiz. Can this ragtag mix of people stop the killer before he strikes again? This book is the first in the Bill Hodges trilogy. It also introduces Holly, who got her own book this past summer. Mr. Mercedes won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Hodges is a sympathetic character as are the people who help him. The killer is clearly beyond saving as his entire life has been full of psychopathy. The reader will cheer for Hodges and his team in a race against time and the book is recommended for thriller readers.