Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Finders Keepers

Stephen King’s latest novel, Finders Keepers, the second novel in the Bill Hodges Trilogy, returns us to the time and place of Bill Hodges, the former detective who featured largely in King’s Mr. Mercedes. This time, however, it takes quite a few chapters for our dear Det Ret to make the scene.  Instead the novel opens up alternating between two characters, young preteen Peter Saubers and a twenty-something ne’er-do-well, Morris Bellamy, with literary pretensions.  Fans of reclusive literary giants (Salinger comes to mind) may be sympathetic to Bellamy. Obsessed with the work of John Rothstein, famous for his “Runner” trilogy, Morris sets out to make right a perceived wrong.  Believing that Rothstein’s third book sells out his beloved Jimmy Gold (readers of Misery will recognize this particular bent), Bellamy seeks to both avenge, and possibly redeem, his literary hero, by executing the robbery and subsequent murder of Rothstein.  His research on the author’s habits (regular purchases of moleskin notebooks) pays off when the safe offers up not only 20,000 dollars in cash, but also a great number of meticulously filled notebooks in the author’s hand.  Before he is able to fulfill his obsessive desire to reopen the tale of Jimmy Gold, Morris is picked up and imprisoned for an unrelated crime. Fast-forward 20 years, and meet Peter Saubers, a pragmatic eavesdropper in a family that has literally been crippled by the crimes of Brady Hartsfield (the disturbed villain in Mr. Mercedes). Peter, watching his family’s downward spiral, is seemingly offered a miracle solution when he stumbles upon a half-exposed trunk on the vacant property near his home.  The boy’s choices, fueled by desperation and altruism, and the concurrent release of Morris Bellamy, whose fervor has been finely honed by 35 years of incarceration and abuse, lead to a few action-packed chapters.  However, as a long-time Stephen King fan, I was faintly disappointed in the novel, and its hardly surprising climax.  I felt it lacked the mystery that usually drives my frantic, last 100 pages, what’s-going-to-happen-now, binge reading. Despite this, it was nice to see Bill Hodges and his crew again, however briefly their appearances, and some goings-on with a famed catatonic hint at what could turn out to be a thrilling third installment. Overall, I would give the book a three-star review, but fans of King will likely enjoy it or hate it, as fans (Annie Wilkes and Morris Bellamy would understand) often do.

No comments: