Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
Mr. Mercedes
by Stephen King
(Audio book)
I love Stephen King. I do. It's not about the horror for me, it's the concepts and the characters. And I'd heard Stephen King's recent stuff was great. This was not great. This was disturbing and a half. I had trouble wanting to keep going with it. The only thing that really kept me going was the fact that the bad guy was so bad that if I didn't make it to the end, this would be unresolved in my mind. I KNEW he was going to be stopped. So I had to keep going to make absolutely sure and see it for myself.
This book is Stephen King's attempt at a mystery. It's a decent attempt--a likable ex-cop who needs something to do with his life gets a letter from "the one that got away" and decides he must track down this killer. He's joined by an attractive young woman who inexplicably has the hots for him, his teenage lawn mowing computer genius neighborhood kid friend, and a mumbling 40-something woman with mental problems who acts like a teenager half the time. This rag-tag gang's task is to find a man who mowed a Mercedes into a crowd of job seekers one early morning.
The bad guy is horrible. And, as Stephen King is so good at, that horribleness is brought out in awful detail. Not only does the young man love killing but he works in computer support and drives an ice cream truck, dreaming of the day he could poison all the ice cream or put on his suicide vest and kill the president. He lives with his mother, who he loves, and their relationship is disgustingly close and told in disgusting detail.
The story definitely ended in a satisfying way. And, like in all other Stephen King books, no character (good or bad) is safe. They don't all make it t the end, but I'm very happy I stuck with it to finally see it all play out. If this is the start of a detective story series, I might or might not read the next one. It was strange reading Stephen King and not seeing any supernatural anything pop up or even hinted at within the pages. It was as normal a mystery as you get, even though you know who did it from the beginning. The POV switches from the cop to the bad guy and back again throughout the book, and sometimes within the same scene with moments sort of like "He looked in the closet where Brady had until recently hid his explosives." So we, as readers, are the only ones who have a complete picture of what's going on, even though there are elements we don't see and can't piece together yet. We get to solve some of the mystery as well as sit back for the ride through this sicko's life (you can tell which of the two POVs I preferred).
It was a worthy attempt, but definitely one of the worst Stephen King books I've ever read as far as enjoyment factor. Ick ick icky things he does with his mother and horrible things he thinks about other people! I felt like needing to take a shower and clean off every time I finished reading another section of the perk(perp)'s story. I was glad when the story was over, that's for sure!