David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "likable-characters"
Mr. Mercedes
I'm not a big horror fan, but Stephen King has always had the ability to hook the reader on the first page, so I've read my fair share of his novels and short story collections. MR. MERCEDES isn't really horror anyway. King's son, Joe Hill, must have influenced him to try the mystery genre, and that's what this book is.
King hooks us with these two likable characters, Augie Odenkirk and Janice Cray, who are both standing in the rain waiting for a job fair to open. A thousand people are to be hired and they're both desperate for work. Janice is so desperate she's brought her baby with her and it needs to be changed and fed. Augie loans her his sleeping bag. Just when she's all set, a Mercedes plows into the crowd. We're hoping Augie, our hero, and Janice and her baby aren't hurt, but that rat King won't let us have our way. So then who's this story about? King is a lot like John Sandford in that he lets you follow the killer throughout the book. This killer is a computer repairman, part-time ice cream salesman (That's how he gets to know the real hero of the book, a retired cop, named Bill Hodges, who's thinking of eating his father's hand gun). Brady Hartfield has seen him through the window. and he intuitively knows that's what Bill is doing. So he writes Bill a letter, signing it Mr. Mercedes. (BTW, that's a flaw in the book. Newspapers don't give serial murderers nicknames anymore like the Zodiac killer or Son of Sam. That's what they want, publicity. If they do, they'll hear from the police.) Brady's new target is Bill Hodges, and he wants to drive him to suicide, just as he's done with the owner of the Mercedes.
Brady Hartsfield is one sick puppy. He's got an Oedipus complex for one thing. He still lives with his mother, and he's got a man cave in the basement where he torments his future victims via the dark Internet. He's trying to get Bill to sign on to a site called “Debbie's Blue Umbrella”, but actually he's done Bill a favor; Bill now has a reason to live besides watching Judge Judy on TV: to track down this monster before he hurts somebody else.
Often divorced Bill also meets the owner of the Mercedes's sister, Janey. Mr. Mercedes has sent her sister a letter similar to the one Bill received. Bill is 62; Janey is 44 and beautiful. For some reason, she likes him, despite the age disparity. She hasn't had much luck with men, and Bill is a very nice man. She wants in on the search for the killer. So does Jerome, Bill's lawn boy, who also happens to be an all-American boy bent on being accepted at an Ivy league school. But he likes to pretend he's a field hand around Bill as he's an African-American. He's also adept at computers, and he helps Bill check out “Debbie's Blue Umbrella.” The last member of the group is Holly, whose mother was Mercedes owner Olivia Trelawney's sister. Holly ia forty-four years old but her mother, along with other bullies, has driven her to bat city She's got more ticks than a Rocky Mountain forest, but she's also computer literate, and she's brave and smart, despite her condition.
This book will keep you on the edge of your chair until the climax is over, and you'll keep reading to find out what happened to everybody after that. It even ends with a cliffhanger of sorts. Usually that's a no-no for me, but I would have read the next King mystery anyway.
King hooks us with these two likable characters, Augie Odenkirk and Janice Cray, who are both standing in the rain waiting for a job fair to open. A thousand people are to be hired and they're both desperate for work. Janice is so desperate she's brought her baby with her and it needs to be changed and fed. Augie loans her his sleeping bag. Just when she's all set, a Mercedes plows into the crowd. We're hoping Augie, our hero, and Janice and her baby aren't hurt, but that rat King won't let us have our way. So then who's this story about? King is a lot like John Sandford in that he lets you follow the killer throughout the book. This killer is a computer repairman, part-time ice cream salesman (That's how he gets to know the real hero of the book, a retired cop, named Bill Hodges, who's thinking of eating his father's hand gun). Brady Hartfield has seen him through the window. and he intuitively knows that's what Bill is doing. So he writes Bill a letter, signing it Mr. Mercedes. (BTW, that's a flaw in the book. Newspapers don't give serial murderers nicknames anymore like the Zodiac killer or Son of Sam. That's what they want, publicity. If they do, they'll hear from the police.) Brady's new target is Bill Hodges, and he wants to drive him to suicide, just as he's done with the owner of the Mercedes.
Brady Hartsfield is one sick puppy. He's got an Oedipus complex for one thing. He still lives with his mother, and he's got a man cave in the basement where he torments his future victims via the dark Internet. He's trying to get Bill to sign on to a site called “Debbie's Blue Umbrella”, but actually he's done Bill a favor; Bill now has a reason to live besides watching Judge Judy on TV: to track down this monster before he hurts somebody else.
Often divorced Bill also meets the owner of the Mercedes's sister, Janey. Mr. Mercedes has sent her sister a letter similar to the one Bill received. Bill is 62; Janey is 44 and beautiful. For some reason, she likes him, despite the age disparity. She hasn't had much luck with men, and Bill is a very nice man. She wants in on the search for the killer. So does Jerome, Bill's lawn boy, who also happens to be an all-American boy bent on being accepted at an Ivy league school. But he likes to pretend he's a field hand around Bill as he's an African-American. He's also adept at computers, and he helps Bill check out “Debbie's Blue Umbrella.” The last member of the group is Holly, whose mother was Mercedes owner Olivia Trelawney's sister. Holly ia forty-four years old but her mother, along with other bullies, has driven her to bat city She's got more ticks than a Rocky Mountain forest, but she's also computer literate, and she's brave and smart, despite her condition.
This book will keep you on the edge of your chair until the climax is over, and you'll keep reading to find out what happened to everybody after that. It even ends with a cliffhanger of sorts. Usually that's a no-no for me, but I would have read the next King mystery anyway.
Finders Keepers
MISERY has always been my favorite Stephen King book, mainly because it wasn't about some dopey clown sticking his head out of a sewer grating. It was about an obsessed fan who happened to find her favorite writer in dire straights after a car accident and refused to let him go until he promised to continue her favorite series, which he had discontinued. It was plausible, in other words.
FINDERS KEEPERS is also about an obsessed fan who sets out to rob a J.D. Salinger like novelist who had been out of the public eye for twenty years. Morris Bellamy is more interested in a continuation of the Jimmy God novels (think Holden Caulfield), the last of which seemed to him to have been a sellout. John Rothstein keeps his writing and some money in a safe which Morris and his friends break into; Morris then dispatches his literary hero with a bullet to the brain and hides the money and the moleskin notebooks in a trunk buried beneath a tree. But he's arrested for a brutal rape and spends the next thirty-five years in jail.
Along come Pete Saubers who lives in Morrie's old house; he finds the trunk and the money as the bank beneath the tree has eroded revealing the trunk. Wonder of wonders Pete is also a big Rothstein fan, but he needs the money more to help his parents. His dad just happens to be a victim of the Mr. Mercedes attack; he can barely walk and has been laid off his job as a real estate salesman, thanks to the recession. His wife still has a job but just barely. Pete decides to send them five hundred a month, anonymously, and it pulls them through. By the time he's ready for college it's running out and his little sister wants to go to a private school; she's bullied at the public school she goes to.
Pete wants to go to college to become a heinous (j.k) literary critic, as he doesn't quite have the talent to imitate his hero, Rothstein. He decides to sell some of the moleskin notebooks; he asks his former hippie teacher to whom he might sell them without too many questions being asked. Coincidentally (he said sarcastically) the teacher recommends a former friend of Morrie's who now owns a rare books store. He's wise to Pete immediately and sets out to blackmail him into giving him all of the notebooks. There are two new Jimmy Gold books, the second of which is his best, in Pete's estimation.
I know you're asking, Where the heck is Bill Hodges and his gang from MR. MERCEDES?, as was I. It takes over a hundred pages before he makes an appearance. Tina, Pete's little sister, the one who gets bullied, is friends with Barbara Robinson from the first book. Of course she is. She's noticed Pete is losing weight, his acne has resurfaced and he talks in his sleep. Holly who brained Mr. Mercedes with a sock containing ball bearings is now Bill's assistant, and she's gaining confidence every day. Jerome, Bill's lawn care boy from the first book is Barb's older brother, now in college. He returns to help out.
I think you know by now my main objection to the book is the unusual number of coincidences. But this is Stephen King, and he's got to be the best writer I've ever read at hooking you on the first page. Besides, Bill is an ex-cop who was suicidal at the beginning of MR. MERCEDES; Holly is somehow related to the woman Bill fell in love with in that book who came to a sad end. Bill blames himself. There's a cliffhanger at the end; I hate cliffhangers, but this is a three-book project, and the cliffhanger involves Mr. Mercedes, Brady Hartsfield, who's supposed to be brain dead; Bill isn't so sure. The John Rothstein plot has been fully resolved.
FINDERS KEEPERS is also about an obsessed fan who sets out to rob a J.D. Salinger like novelist who had been out of the public eye for twenty years. Morris Bellamy is more interested in a continuation of the Jimmy God novels (think Holden Caulfield), the last of which seemed to him to have been a sellout. John Rothstein keeps his writing and some money in a safe which Morris and his friends break into; Morris then dispatches his literary hero with a bullet to the brain and hides the money and the moleskin notebooks in a trunk buried beneath a tree. But he's arrested for a brutal rape and spends the next thirty-five years in jail.
Along come Pete Saubers who lives in Morrie's old house; he finds the trunk and the money as the bank beneath the tree has eroded revealing the trunk. Wonder of wonders Pete is also a big Rothstein fan, but he needs the money more to help his parents. His dad just happens to be a victim of the Mr. Mercedes attack; he can barely walk and has been laid off his job as a real estate salesman, thanks to the recession. His wife still has a job but just barely. Pete decides to send them five hundred a month, anonymously, and it pulls them through. By the time he's ready for college it's running out and his little sister wants to go to a private school; she's bullied at the public school she goes to.
Pete wants to go to college to become a heinous (j.k) literary critic, as he doesn't quite have the talent to imitate his hero, Rothstein. He decides to sell some of the moleskin notebooks; he asks his former hippie teacher to whom he might sell them without too many questions being asked. Coincidentally (he said sarcastically) the teacher recommends a former friend of Morrie's who now owns a rare books store. He's wise to Pete immediately and sets out to blackmail him into giving him all of the notebooks. There are two new Jimmy Gold books, the second of which is his best, in Pete's estimation.
I know you're asking, Where the heck is Bill Hodges and his gang from MR. MERCEDES?, as was I. It takes over a hundred pages before he makes an appearance. Tina, Pete's little sister, the one who gets bullied, is friends with Barbara Robinson from the first book. Of course she is. She's noticed Pete is losing weight, his acne has resurfaced and he talks in his sleep. Holly who brained Mr. Mercedes with a sock containing ball bearings is now Bill's assistant, and she's gaining confidence every day. Jerome, Bill's lawn care boy from the first book is Barb's older brother, now in college. He returns to help out.
I think you know by now my main objection to the book is the unusual number of coincidences. But this is Stephen King, and he's got to be the best writer I've ever read at hooking you on the first page. Besides, Bill is an ex-cop who was suicidal at the beginning of MR. MERCEDES; Holly is somehow related to the woman Bill fell in love with in that book who came to a sad end. Bill blames himself. There's a cliffhanger at the end; I hate cliffhangers, but this is a three-book project, and the cliffhanger involves Mr. Mercedes, Brady Hartsfield, who's supposed to be brain dead; Bill isn't so sure. The John Rothstein plot has been fully resolved.
