A wacko named Brady Hartsfield (he is Hartfield on the inside cover jacket, no ‘s’ in the middle of his last name), who works as an I.T. Tech for a geek squad and as an ice cream man for Mr. Tastey, steals a Mercedes from a Mrs. Trelawney and decides to plow into a crowd of people lined up for a job fair. The results are eight dead and fifteen maimed. He later mentally tortures and convinces the super rich Mrs. Trelawney into believing that she left the keys in her Mercedes and is therefore responsible for all those deaths. She commits suicide. Meanwhile, Bill Hodges, a retired detective, who failed to solve the case (amongst two or three others) sits in his home watching T.V. pondering suicide. Wow, a lot of weak minded people, right? Anyway, one day Bill gets a letter from the wacko stating that he is the Mercedes killer. He wants Bill to contact him on the internet on a super secure site called The Blue Umbrella. This gets Bill out of his doldrums and after giving it some thought contacts Brady Hartsfield (or Hartfield-sorry it’s the editors fault) and types, “Seen a lot of false confessions in my time, but this one’s a dilly. I’m retired but not stupid. Withheld evidence proves you are not the Mercedes Killer. *uck off, *sshole.” Which prompts Brady to think to himself, “You fat *uck, he whispers, unaware that hot tears have begun to spill from his eyes. “You fat stupid useless *uck. It was me! It was me! It was me!” Now you are probably saying to yourself, “I thought you said that it was boring?” Well, believe it or not the story bogs down from here (page 151) until page 279. That’s a 128 pages of trying to keep my eyes open.
Luckily, page 279 happens, and I wake up big time. Stephen King, you are a sly one. You took a three star novel and made it a four star novel in the last 158 pages. Two of the sidebar characters in the story, Holly Gibney, a twice institutionalized cousin, who has had ‘breaks with reality’, and Jerome Robinson, a grass mower and brilliant student, become big time contributors in pursuing this case. You probably noticed that I like to use a lot of commas and polysyndeton syntax. Anyway, the wacko decides to do one more mass killing. Now, if you have read Stephen King before, you know that the wacko (Brady) could succeed or not. It depends on the author’s mood at the book’s end. I thought this novel was going to ape King’s Lisey's Story, which started out boring and became even more monotonous. Mr. Mercedes wasn’t as good as the two Stephen King novels I mentioned in the first paragraph, or Thinner , one of my personal favorites, but outstanding none the less. One has to wonder how this author can crank out so many noteworthy novels, but he does. Based on the first 151 pages and the last 158, I must recommend this novel.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: Lets talk about my three favorite Stephen King novels mentioned in my review. First there is, The Stand: Goodreads.com says, “This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death."And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.
In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered to be one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript. Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand Complete and Uncut includes more than five hundred pages of material previously deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral complexity of a true epic.
For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.”
Next we have, It: Goodreads.com says, “The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by an eponymous being, which exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children. The novel is told through narratives alternating between two time periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode. It deals with themes which would eventually become King staples: the power of memory, childhood trauma, and the ugliness lurking behind a façade of traditional small-town values.”
Now for my favorite, Thinner: Amazon.com says, “Billy Halleck, good husband, loving father, is both beneficiary and victim of the American Good Life: he has an expensive home, a nice family, and a rewarding career as a lawyer. But he is also fifty pounds overweight and, as his doctor keeps reminding him, heading into heart attack country. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Billy sideswipes an old gypsy woman as she is crossing the street—and her ancient father passes a bizarre and terrible judgment on him.“Thinner,” the old gypsy man whispers, and caresses his cheeks like a lover. Just one word…but six weeks later and ninety-three pounds lighter, Billy Halleck is more than worried. He’s terrified. And desperate enough for one last gamble…that will lead him to a nightmare showdown with the forces of evil melting his flesh away.”
Now for some Stephen King quotes:
From The Stand: “Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
From It : “Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.”
From Thinner: “Food was becoming more abstract, more aestheticized and compartmentalized-- and indeed, after kaiseki, who can ever go back to Burger King, or even a well-made gourmet sandwich? Instead of food, I longed for other things to swell my body and buoy its lines--- lists of ancient queens, the grave and stately names for the forgotten regions of the sea, the imagined words for desire in hermetic languages; food, on the other hand, was leaving me increasingly unmoved.... I grew thinner and thinner, streamlined, my blood nourished by ever-slighter molecules, some kind of pale elongated light running the length of my body, nightmares detouring it in the most starved, and so-lightly blue-black-bruised, corners of my flesh. In this state of non-health, every step became a performance, each stride an act of contrition, a question and an answer.... On the once-dry, now-flowering branches of my skeletal limbs, the words sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch were being invisibly but indelibly written. I was a festival of new senses.”
Stephen King on the cover of Time Magazine:
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