Book Review: Mr. Mercedes

Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King

Source: Amazon.com

From the book cover: In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands.
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.
Brady Hartsfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.
Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.

The review: Mr. Mercedes was an unexpected read for me.  From what I had heard concerning King's latest few novels, with the choice between Mercedes and Revival, I'd have chosen to read Revival.  However, when the Cyber Monday ads on Google Play featured Mercedes at a deep discount, I took the bait.  After all, I needed something to do on my tablet when all my little The Simpsons - Tapped Out people were busy doing their jobs.

The author, Stephen King. / Source: Amazon.com

The novel, Mr. Mercedes, took a while to build up for me.  I'd read a page or so a night, just passing the time.  This is common for King's works in my experience, and more so these days.  Some of his earlier works would really hit a fever pitch early, but he seems to have mellowed with time. 

 

I suppose I kept waiting for something supernatural to occur in Mr. Mercedes.  But for the potential novel reader, let me clarify that Mr. Mercedes is more of a crime drama than a trip into spook land.  I don't begrudge it either, as the novel picks up well as it builds steam.  As I'm sure I've said before, King has a talent for spinning a tale, and Mercedes is no exception.  From its gruesome beginning, when innocent job-seekers are mown down by the psuedonymed titular character driving a stolen Benz SL500, the story builds bit by bit, and character by character, right up to the concluding moments. 

Speaking of characters, King does stereotypical but relatable to a "t."  We've got characters such as Retired Detective Hodges, who never caught our titular villain (I think I like the word "titular" today), and is unwittingly drawn back into the case when the bad guy decides to contact him and taunt our overweight and worn down protagonist, in a goading effort to make him commit suicide.  There is also Jerome, the high-honors collegiate-bound high school black kid who solves problems Hodges is far too out-to-pasture to be capable of fixing on his own.  And Janey Patterson, Hodges unexpected love interest.  I could spend a paragraph on what King does with Janey and her dead sister, Olivia, and how he plays mirror image with them, and evokes unexpected empathy with the reader.  And also there is Cousin Holly, who ends up doing what we all would love to do to a serial killer, at the novel's climax.  The main cast is to type enough to feel familiar, but dynamic enough to keep the reader cheering for their successes and feeling their failures.

An example of a Mercedes SL500.  For myself, I couldn't imagine such a nice looking vehicle being used in such a horrific manner.  Instead, I pictured a Mercedes automobile from maybe the 1980s.  You know, back when almost everything automotive was still boxy and brutish looking. / Source: theautochannel.com

And of course, there is "Mr. Mercedes" himself, a guy who we can ever-so-slightly sympathize with too, and yet are repelled by at the same time.  King's villains of the purely real-world set are often just enough on the sympathetic side to be relatable, which makes them just that much more unsettling to the reader.  You ask yourself, could I know someone like this?  Is the young guy selling me a burger at the local fast food place, or ringing me up at the big box electronics store register, or even handing out Klondike bars from the ice cream truck on a hot summer day, doing such things in his leisure time that would set your hair on edge and make you look over your shoulder in dread?  Makes you wonder, do you ever really know a person?

This leads me to one plot element in Mr. Mercedes that I could understand, but still found repellent.  The bad guy, disturbing enough that he goes on a joy-ride killing spree and mows down innocent people in the wee hours of the morning, also happens to have consensual, but still inappropriate, relations with his alcoholic mother.  I don't consider myself overly squeamish, but this bugged me.  It isn't that King didn't write it well.  Far from it.  And it is silly to say it shouldn't be in the book just because it is unseemly.  But I guess it says more about me personally that I find such material gross enough to wish it hadn't been included.  From a clinical point-of-view, incest is not that unheard of, and there are much worse things in the world.  But it left me with a touch of the creeps.  Like I said, I guess it says something about a person, the things that turn their stomach.  People killed in horrible ways?  Bad, yes.  But have a guy have relations with his mother, and I'm grossed out big time. 


Ice cream in Turkey?  I'd have not believed it.  Just not the sort of place I imagine ice cream in.  Guess that shows how much of a nimrod I am, eh?  He must make good money or be pretty bored to not shovel that sugar as fast as he can.  Or maybe people come from all around to get a treat and a show.

As for my recommendation?  Well, I can't think of a novel from King I've read that I would flatly recommend against reading, for adults who understand what they are getting into (i.e.: not for young 'uns or the overly impressionable, in my opinion... but we're all big kids inside and are we not all impressionable by what we contact in our day to day lives?).  I've read some of King's stuff that was better than others.  He is simply an effective writer, and knows how to spin a good story.  No, this is not Deja-vu.  I'm re-stating myself again, for the upteenth time.  So I will break this recommendation down a bit further, as is usually my way.  I'd say if you like crime dramas, and can stomach the adult content matter, you'll probably dig Mr. Mercedes.  It's typical King with the language, though honestly it seemed a touch more toned down in the general vulgarity department than others I can think of (such as Under the Dome).  And the violence/graphicness of subject/content, and some sex that is not gratuitous but still there, and some sex that... well as I said, is not my cup of tea, though still thankfully not overly described.

You know, in my view, the nice thing about King's writing in general is that you know what you are getting, even if you don't KNOW what you're getting.  Mercedes is not a book on ghosts and ghoulies, yet it evinces King's usual diligence, artistic style, wit, and grimly keen eye for the macabre.  If you go looking for supernatural bumps in the night, you'll get little of those.  If you like building suspense and not being sure if things will turn out alright in the end, Mercedes has that in droves. 

If any of these things turn you cold, then I'd steer clear.  Mr. Mercedes was worth the read, in my opinion.  It's not one of King's best works - having read enough of them, I still think much of his earlier works had more impact and raw talent - but it is far from his worst.

Learn more about Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: Bill Waterson, but the location I got it from was ohioemployerlawblog.com

Yes, it's that time of year when people have already begun to fall off the wagon on their resolutions.  I'd say it would be worth a few minutes of my time to actually look up how many people claim to actually keep a resolution they make for more than six months.  Hats off to those folks.  As for me, I fall into Calvin's camp.  Let everybody else make resolutions.  I'm fine like I am, don't ya know!