The villain is vile and despicable in a ludicrous, over-the-top kind of way, and the sidekicks, while likeable enough in theory, were so flat and stereotypical that I couldn’t really bring myself to care about them. No matter how hole-ridden a plot is, or how unsatisfying the ending, he tends to write good, relatable, and sympathetic characters who make the journey worthwhile. The cat-and-mouse game that escalates into a terrorist plot was actually engaging enough-however weak the story, King always keeps me turning the pages-but he completely failed at the characters, which is usually what he’s good at.
While I think that it’s among his weaker output as a whole, it’s still nice to see an established author experiment with genres outside of his comfort zone so far into his career.Ī murderer who got away with mowing down a crowd of innocent and desperate people waiting in line at a job fair with a Mercedes Benz taunts the now retired (and suicidal) detective Hodges who worked the case through a letter, prompting him to rediscover a reason for living, and investigate the matter on his own. The other two also had their moments, and I’d say the trilogy is worth picking up if you’re already a King fan, but it should be nowhere near the top of your list if you’re new to his works. It went pretty much as I expected it would, but considering that I wasn’t expecting much from this series in the first place, it still managed to surprise me with a pretty great second book.
I was pretty miffed when I couldn’t read The Outsider when that came out (it sounded much more appealing, but I was told that it would reference and spoil this trilogy, which would’ve put me off reading it even more), and with the upcoming If It Bleeds containing a novella centered around yet another recurring character who first appears in the Bill Hodges series, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet.
I’m a completist (now that this is over, I’m only missing a handful), and he just seems to keep piling on on this one. The non-or-only-slightly-supernatural stories are generally my favorites by King, but I just don’t think he’s very good at crime fiction… and yet, here we are. After it was completed, I still put it off for years, because somewhere deep down, I suspected that it wouldn’t really be my thing. Mercedes first came out, it was already known that it would be the first book in a projected trilogy, and I never start an unfinished series if I can help it.
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