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Title: Mr. Mercedes
(Bill Hodges Trilogy #1)
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Crime
First published: June 3rd 2014
Finished reading: September 30th 2014
Pages: 436
Rating 2,5

“The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.”

myrambles1

Stephen King is one of my preferred horror/mystery authors. When I found out he published a new novel this year, I knew I just had to get myself a copy and read Mr. Mercedes as soon as possible. Unfortunately the book didn’t turned out to be as good as I would have thought. In fact, I was mostly left wondering if Stephen King REALLY wrote this book, or if he had someone else doing the job. Mr. Mercedes is definitely not King worthy, and it doesn’t deserve more than the 2,5 rating I was forced to give. I sincerly hope that Mr. Mercedes isn’t an example of his future work! Although I guess there are still a lot of older books I still have to read… If you have read his work before and enjoyed it, you have been warned when you choose this one. And if you don’t know his work and want to get to know it, I suggest you start with a different book… There are way better King books out there.

shortsummary1

Bill Hodges was once a very succesful detective, but now he is retired he feels useless and he has lost the will to live. His unsolved cases are haunting him; the one where someone stole a Mercedes and used it to kill eight innocent people in particular. Just as he seriously contemplates suicide, the so-called Mercedes killer starts contacting him. Hodges received a letter in which the killer lets him know he is watching him and invited him to talk through an anonymous chat. Hodges suspects something and uses his old contacts to slowly start investigating the case again; this time on his own. He doesn’t want to alert his old partner just yet and he thinks he can get the perp by himself. But he doesn’t know a lot about modern technology and he has to rely on the young Jerome to help him with the computer as well as the garden… Hodges then starts to talk with the killer through the chat site. Although the killer first said he didn’t intend to do it again, he is highly unstable and ends up planning something WAY bigger than the Mercedes attack. It is up to Hodges and his very unlikely helpers to stop him…

finalthoughts

I didn’t like Mr. Mercedes. It was close to boring, I didn’t like the writing style and the characters weren’t really convincing. Like I said before, this isn’t King worthy, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend reading it. There are way better options out there if you want to read something written by Stephen King. I seriously hope this book was indeed written by a ghost writer and that he soon realizes that this ‘new’ way of writing isn’t satisfactory. Until then I will be reading only his previous work myself…