The adventures of Retired Detective Bill Hodges and his friends have come to an end, and I’m sad.
I didn’t expect a whole lot when Uncle Stevie announced that he was working on a trilogy of mystery novels a few years ago. But I adored Mr. Mercedes, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. And I really liked 99% of Finders Keepers…it was only that 1% about stupid Brady Hartsfield moving things around with his mind that bugged me. So, I was kind of irked when I found out that End of Watch was about Brady. I just wanted Bill, Holly, and Jerome to keep kicking ass all over town, taking down bad guys, and not worrying about stupid Brady Hartsfield over in the traumatic brain injury ward of the local hospital. I thought I was all set with him.
But folks, this Constant Reader has been proven wrong.
End of Watch is almost COMPLETELY about Brady Hartsfield, and the obsessive evil that lives inside of him. And I couldn’t stop reading it. I NEEDED to know what was going to happen on the next page.
A brief, hopefully spoiler-free synopsis:
Brady Hartsfield isn’t as brain dead as you might think. He’s on some experimental drugs that just might have turned him into a telekinetic powerhouse. And he’s hell-bent on taking revenge on Bill Hodges for ruining his plans to blow up that concert a few years back. He wants to take Bill and Jerome down for the way they hurt him — and if he can get a slew of teenagers to commit suicide while he’s taking down Hodges, that would be just great, thanks.
Using some old video games that have the power to hypnotize their users, Brady sets a plan in motion that could not only ruin the lives of Bill, Jerome, and Holly, but of every single young girl that was supposed to die at the concert.
And of course, the local police aren’t buying that a “gorked out vegetable” like Brady is responsible for anything other than sitting in his chair and drooling. But Bill and Holly know better. And they start putting all of the pieces together from the various crime scenes that they are invited to by Bill’s old partner, and are willing to believe the unbelievable in order to stop Brady.
It wasn’t my favorite of the trilogy, because there was a little too much Carrie-esque, telekinetic, supernatural, magical brain stuff going on for a detective novel. But it still worked.
And it hit me in the feels, folks. We’ve gotten to know these characters so well over the past three books, that saying goodbye to them was not something I wanted to do. I want to know what’s going to happen to Barbara and her handsome new boyfriend. I need to know what Jerome is going to do when he’s finished volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. And Holly? What in the world is going to happen to someone like Holly if she isn’t out in the world solving crimes all day long? And I’m going to miss Bill Hodges. I’m going to miss the way he solves crimes with old-school methods, how he completely doesn’t understand technology, and how his unlikely friendships with Jerome and Holly made him a better man in the last chapters of his life.
These are things I stay up thinking about at night, Uncle Stevie. Thanks for creating these characters and telling their stories. I can’t wait to find out what you’re working on for us next.
3 1/2 stars for this book. 4 stars for the trilogy.
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