Like all of Mr King's stories, this starts off very strong. Sometimes he tails off before the end, but given how good his writing is, I don't mind so much. This is my first hardback of his since (gasp) Insomnia. But so far, so good. I love a well crafted thriller, and this is shaping up to be very good indeed. Trying not to finish it too fast. Even if this is part of an unnamed trilogy, I want to savour it.
Many people have talked about the book already so I won't rehash all that here, except to say that it is a departure from Mr King's usual trade of horror.
I just got a good feeling about Mr Mercedes. I felt it was going to be a good book, and even though non-horror, there are still plenty of scares to be had.
There were even parts that could be safely described as 'icky', but King is able to balance this well so that it is not drawn out and we are dragged along with it.
The story is quite simple. A retired ex-cop, Bill Hodges, is brought back into the fray when the Mercedes Killer, or <b>merckill</> as he refers to himself online, ploughs a car of the same name into a crowd of people who were just waiting to see if they could get a job via the dole office.
This is one of the books I received for my birthday a month ago, and I've savoured it over the entire month.
Having said that, I raced through the last hundred pages or so, and so does King - the pace is quite something and it builds to a very nice conclusion. This is the first book of an unnamed trilogy so there is more to come, and this is where I hit the first road bump.
The book is great, satisfying and enjoyable. I think the story is much more stronger than King's characters. This is a concern because he is so great at characterisation, so although you know bad things happen to people in the story, I wanted to feel more connected.
Perhaps this is what we will see over books two and three, and because of that, I am prepared to wait and see what happens.
Mr Mercedes is a solid thriller, a genre I enjoy and would like to read more of. I have seen some comments that it is no better than other thrillers out there. Fair enough. That's okay for me.
The writing, as ever, is superb, and there are some genuine laugh out loud moments.
You do care about the ending. Will Hodges catch the computer savvy but seriously deranged Brady Hartsfield, the Mr of the title?
I know Stephen King polarises people but he does have an army of fans too. So I will summarise by saying that he probably could have done even better with this story, but as it is not his strongest genre, I think he's done amazingly well.
Four solid stars. When the trilogy is complete, maybe we can round it up by another one.
