One common King theme that is present - at the core of the story, in fact - is the sometimes difficult relationship between author and reader.

The big bad in 'Finders Keepers' is strictly of the ripped-from-the-headlines variety and the villain is all too human and as ordinary as he is dangerous. The women Hodges encounters (as with most of King's female characters over the years) are strong and smart, flawed and complex - no femme fatales, no wise- and gum-cracking leggy secretaries.Īlso absent are any classic King supernatural or horror themes. Still, it bears mentioning that what earns both detective stories the '21st-century' qualifier is while they are peppered with Raymond Chandler-worthy tough guy tropes, they include the kind of strong, complex female characters that were largely absent from the hard-boiled tales of old. Hodges and victims of the Mercedes killer are not the only characters who made the connecting trip to 'Finders,' but to list them further would include major spoilers for those who haven't yet read 'Mr. The elusive 'Mercedes killer' got his name after he plowed a stolen luxury car into a crowd of job seekers, one of which is the now-injured father of Pete Saubers.

Mercedes,' in which a depressed cop was forced out of retirement by a mass murderer he failed to catch. Hodges, a 21st-century version of the classic hard-boiled detective, made his first appearance in 'Mr. Bellamy buries the money and notebooks and is subsequently locked away for a different crime.ĭecades later, a boy name Pete Saubers unearths the treasure and finds himself in the cross hairs when Bellamy is released from prison after 35 years. Rothstein's unhinged critic kills him and empties his safe of cash and dozens of unpublished notebooks that contain at least one more Gold novel. Twentysomething Morris Bellamy considered both moves to be capital offenses. John Rothstein hadn't published in decades, but before he retired, he wrote his rebellious fictional hero, Jimmy Gold, into a career in advertising. 'Finder's Keepers' begins with the murder of an iconic author by an angry, obsessed fan. With 'Finders Keepers,' the second book of his Bill Hodges trilogy, Stephen King delivers everything readers of his recent work have come to expect - mostly good news for King fans and probably a pleasant surprise for those who tend to dismiss his deceptively easy, chatty prose.

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