Day 68 : Mr. Mercedes - Book Review

I am a big fan of Mr. King. So no matter what he writes or says or does, I am going to read/listen/support him come what may. Call be biased, but The King is the living defacto ruler of the horror fiction. Ask any constant reader of his work you will hear only praises for him.

This book is about a mass murderer who just shows up, kills over half a dozen jobless people one dank morning, and the seemingly disappears from the face of the earth never to be heard of again. He’s dubbed Mr. Mercedes by the masses owing to the vehicle he had used to run over his unwary victims. His act had caused a lot of furor and rage, media had gone 'batshit crazy' over this 'national tragedy'. (These words have started to feel so superfluous now.)

This book is also about a retired cop who was the primary working on the investigation to catch this killer. The ex-cop is now living a life of lonesome and TV robot-like addiction. He is one of those retirees who'd left a high-functioning highly-active job and now doesn't know what to do with himself. A man without purpose, at times he sits there with a revolver in front of him, building up courage to use it on himself, to find a way out of his sad lonely life. He is not built to survive in the modern age, he does not belong in the age of so much technology.

This book is also about two other characters one younger and other older in age. One male other one female. One mentally much older than he seems, other too mentally impeded to seem of her age. These characters and their perspective bring the story into the 21st century. And add the Watson to the ex-cop’s Holmes.

This book is about Stephen King trying to bring his style of impending doom and sense of human frailty into the modern literature arena that is now too cluttered with YA books and books fantasy trilogies and sexual deviation trilogies. He has introduced a trio here that he'd use in at least one other new books of his. (Finders Keepers.) A trilogy in the making? Like the Hardy Boys. It does feel queer to think Stephen King writing a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew like books.

This is book is about Stephen King trying to bring technology into his form of scare fest. Here mostly used to solve the jigsaw puzzle of macabre. I suspect we can see something from him in this direction pretty soon. I’d definitely read that!

This is book is for the Constant Reader for whom the writer gives out little easter eggs and wink-winks with mention of his more popular works of the past. The clown, the car, the dog, the hotel.

This is book most importantly for people like me who have followed Stephen King's work throughout the decades and now at this point will ravish any smidgen of genius he outputs.

Long live the King.