12 disc audio book
Mr. Mercedes was well-written and well-read. I simply did not have the time to sit through the entire thing, which is why I avoid established authors, as they get mighty wordy.
The first scene, where a group of people waiting in line at a job fair are run over by a driver in clown mask behind the wheel of a stolen Mercedes, is excellently done. The ensuing personal life of the retired homicide detective still trying to solve the case is also very well done. The villain is a stock wimpy psycho who is made more evil by being a racist, and is the weak link in the story.
Everything about this well written but wordy story pegs the author as a guilty white liberal who came to consciousness in the 1970s. There is an attempt to be edgy by repeatedly using the C-word.
Despite the fact that I could not justify any more time with a story that I have figured out the ending to, I very much liked the way Stephan King exposed the art of dialogue as a way to assess another person’s inner self. He builds sexual tension well, and his protagonist, Retired Detective Hodges, is a vital and well wrought character.
The best aspect of the narrative is the fact that both the hero and the villain are rather ambivalent about the victims of crime and absolutely detest popular culture. King makes a clumsy attempt to imbue the villain with the menace of an Islamist.
He does succeed in crafting some great lines such as ‘Life is a crap carnival with shit prizes’ and ‘a gothic rainbow of a secret.’
If a chance remains that I might retain enough interest in the story to continue it is thanks to the unifying generation gap metaphor, ‘Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella’, an old fashioned chat room hosted by an Eastern European IP service where the ‘old school’ Hodges is invited to converse with the young killer.
