Ah, Stephen King. He’s been my number one go-to author since I was in my early teens and read It and The Tommyknockers. I pretty much never looked back from that point on and while not every book he publishes is a slam dunk (Dreamcatcher is one of the most jawdroppingly terrible things, and I never even bothered to finish Lisey’s Story I was so bored and annoyed by it), when you’re as prolific as King is, that’s no real surprise. But I’d still much rather read an off target Stephen King novel than the best work of some other authors.
Luckily for all of us, Mr Mercedes is very far from an off-target book. It’s funny how King is so often written of as a horror novelist and when he is so much more. Here he delivers an out and out thriller, something the publishers are so keen to publicise, the front cover of the novel tells you that it’s “a riveting suspense thriller”. Bill Hodges is a retired cop, and is still haunted by the one unsolved case he had when he retired. A crazy person stole a Mercedes and drove it in to a crowd of people. Eight died, fifteen were injured, the killer never apprehended. Said killer is Brady Hartsfield, who lives across town from Hodges and decides he’s going to tie up the one loose end he has and goad Hodges into killing himself. He writes to Hodges and suggests they start chatting on a social website, Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella (hence the cover). But both the cat and the mouse have underestimated each other and events threaten to overtake both of them. Soon Hodges, along with two unexpected and unlikely sidekicks, is in a race against time to stop Hartsfield before he can kill again.
Alfred Hitchcock discussed the art of suspense and he said (I’m massively paraphrasing): “show two men talking at a table for 10 minutes, and then detonate a bomb under the table, the audience are first bored then shocked. Show the audience the bomb first, THEN show the men talking, and for ten minutes, that audience will be losing their minds, waiting for the men to be blown up or saved”. King takes that lesson and runs with it here. The first half of Mr Mercedes is all set up. King takes time fleshing out his characters and making you care about (or in the case of Hartsfield, massively dislike and be creeped out by) them. Around the halfway mark, things begin to unravel in ways you don’t initially expect and that’s when you need to make sure you’ve cleared your diary and you should turn your phone off. You won’t want to stop until you get to the very end.
The last 200 pages are easily among the most exciting and pulse racing I have read in a very long time. I have dinged King in the past for being too fond of a happy ending (Cell is the worst offender there, I think), but not only do you want this all to end well for Hodges and his buddies, King genuinely made me fear about whether it would or not. Much like Hartsfield in the Mercedes at the start, King has disabled the airbags on his narrative. There was a time, following King’s near death experience, when it looked like he might never write again and that what he did write would be inferior stuff (Bag of Bones was the first book to emerge after that brush with death and it’s really not one of his best). How wrong we all were. It’s now been fifteen years since that event, and in that time King has published some of his finest work. He shows no signs of slowing down and indeed I was thrilled to discover Mr Mercedes is actually book one of a planned trilogy and part two should be out next year. Get in.
I’m the first Cannonballer to review Mr Mercedes. I doubt I’ll be the last. This and all my other reviews are on my blog here.
It’s peculiar how this works out. Cell through to Just After Sunset, I was sipping the Kool-Aid more than ever before while everyone else was saying something about it tasted off and that they might just as soon swear off it if things kept up like this. With Under the Dome; Full Dark, No Stars; Doctor Sleep; Mr. Mercedes, though, we’ve now swapped places. King, who I’ve called my favorite author for some time now, is at risk of slipping out of my Holy Quadrinity entirely; Rainbow Rowell was already threatening to bump him out of the top spot depending upon how Landline turns out, but now he hardly feels worthy of being in the company of her or the two others, Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut.
It’s a bit reactionary, a bit too “what have you done for me lately?”, yet it feels like it’s been much longer than the nearly three years since 11/22/63, his last standout, was released. All I can think about are the last two, both of which left the sourest of tastes in my mouth. I liked the two before them, except with The Wind Through the Keyhole it was just barely (a tremendous disappointment in light of my love for the rest of the Dark Tower series), and with Joyland it felt just… “off” enough for it to be less of a pleasant sign and more of a sign of a bigger drop-off to come.
And now he’s going sequel-happy on us? People shit all over Pixar for their recent (and upcoming) sequels, which I think is most definitely too reactionary and unfair, but King, who’s getting up there in years, starts reviving old stories that were (I feel) best left alone (i.e., The Dark Tower, The Shining), and now plans to stretch out what felt overlong at 448 pages into a trilogy, and not a peep about him running out of ideas and losing it? Differing opinions and all that, I know, but I don’t understand how harmless movies like Cars, Cars 2, Monsters University, and Brave can inspire as much vitriol as they have while King, an author who’s always been contentious even in his earlier, better respected years, is spared similar backlash. That’s all.
I’ve rambled on enough, though. Sorry for word-vomiting all over the comment section. To end this on a more positive note, I’m still looking forward to Revival. That’s the silver lining here; at least he has two novels coming out this year, at least both are short, and at least they’re different enough that one bombing doesn’t necessarily put the writing on the wall for the other. However, that having been said, if Revival is on par with his last two works, with only sequels to Mr. Mercedes, and possible short stories (which he’s always been hit-or-miss with) to look forward to in the near future… King will officially get the boot and the Holy Quadrinity will one again be just a Holy Trinity.
Hey, word vomit away, it’s all good. I loved Cell but Duma Key isn’t great and I couldn’t even be bothered to read Just After Sunset. The reason Cars and Cars 2 inspired vitriol is they weren’t very good to start with and Cars is possibly the least deserving Pixar movie to be granted the sequel treatment. The Shining, on the other hand, is one of King’s finest and most popular books, so……
As for Mr Mercedes being a planned trilogy, I can’t agree that this felt overlong at 448 pages (the UK edition is only 407 but that’s by the by). I will say that it takes a surprisingly long time to kick off its end game, but I didn’t mind that at all. The back story he was filling in for all the main players was all very interesting and we know now that it’s relevant since we’re going to be carrying on with them.
Sidebar – I have never read any of his Dark Tower books, an oversight I plan to rectify very soon.
Exactly, it’s a classic. People have went at Pixar for making sequels to two of their classics, Finding Nemo and Monsters University, both coming long after the original and thought to not be logical choices for a sequel, and you can say all the same things about Doctor Sleep. People thought it was an April Fool’s joke at first because of the timing of the announcement and its peculiarity. Yet, after it was confirmed to not be a joke, nothing. Just excitement, followed by praise… mostly. No matter what Pixar chooses to make a sequel to, besides the movies asking for a sequel (i.e. The Incredibles) or Toy Story, the announcement is met largely with negativity, whereas King fans seem a lot more open-minded and willing to take the wait and see approach. That’s what I’m getting at here.
I know people didn’t want a sequel to a movie they didn’t like, but tons of people still watched it, seemingly just to hate on it, and then went off on it as if they actually thought they’d have a complete change of heart and like it. So I wasn’t talking about the ones giving Pixar flack for even considering the sequel, because that I get, but rather the ones who watch the sequel despite seemingly having no interest and then get extra offended when they hate it, which should come as no surprise.
This is disregarding the fact that I do honestly love all of Pixar’s output, minus MU (which I do still enjoy) because that’s all a matter of opinion. I do, however, find it odd that Brave has been met with nearly as much negativity as Cars when there’s nothing about it I can see offending people’s sensibilities THAT MUCH. It’s biggest crime seems to be that it was made by Pixar; anyone else and I think it’s just forgotten about except by those who think it’s one of Pixar’s best, such as myself.
Why isn’t King held up to those same standards? People used to rip him to shreds all the time, yet now it’s rare to see someone saying something that isn’t positive about him. Is it the opposite effect Pixar has to combat? Instead of heightened expectations, lowered ones? Is it that simple?
P.S. I’ll address Mr. Mercedes in my review, whenever I get to it. I honestly hated it, just to put that out there, but I didn’t start on this topic to be all contrarian and rant about it. I just wanted to express the gap I feel there is in how people treat Pixar and King and how I seem destined to be perpetually out of sync with others on King (and Pixar, for that matter). The negativity I’ll spare you until that review, when I’m sure I’ll speak at great length about just how much it disappointed me.
I think maybe singling out Pixar is skewing your argument. Sequels in general tend to be given the side eye as they tend to always be seen as merciless cash ins which reduce the merit of the original. Also, they’re granted to the most unnecessary of films (Cruel Intentions 2, anyone?). Even Toy Story 2 was supposed to be a direct to DVD sequel, and when it was bumped up to a cinema release, there was as many raised eyebrows as there were excited squees, until we are all schooled in how you make a fucking great sequel. The follow up film which outstrips the original in both quality and box office gross is a rare thing indeed.
But in the book world, sequels such as Doctor Sleep are far less prevalent. I don’t mean series like Harry Potter and the like, it’s something very different. King has never published something like Doctor Sleep before and maybe the reason it was initially thought to be an April Fool’s is nobody thought he ever would. And so why wouldn’t fans then be excited to discover it’s true? Based on his output in the lead up to it, most of us think he’s currently writing at the top of his game again, after a bit of a blip. You don’t agree.
Why wouldn’t fans be excited? The same reason people weren’t excited for Monsters University, or other past sequels (or in this case, prequels) to “classics:” people don’t generally like to see “classics” messed with in any way. And I read my share of online comments around the time of the book’s announcement and the consensus seemed to be at first that The Shining didn’t need/warrant a sequel and so it must be a joke, yet then that tune appeared to change drastically once it was confirmed. That’s what I find strange.
Oh, and “based on his output in the lead up to it”? I could understand saying that about his upcoming material, since you all seem to have loved Joyland, Doctor Sleep, and Mr. Mercedes all in equal measures, but 11/22/63, The Wind Through the Keyhole, and Joyland weren’t at all the 1-2-3 punch that his last three were, based upon the reaction to it critically and here.