I'm about half way into this new novel, and for me it is definitely one of the best ones yet. The only other I think is anywhere near this good is Misery. (That's not a criticism of the other stuff — just saying these are my favourite two.)
So this is my theory: aged 66, Mr King is now at the top of his game, and we've got many decades of new novels to look forward to.
(I find myself thinking about Philip Roth as I'm reading Mr Mercedes — how he wrote all those great novels quite late on in his career. Roth is even mentioned somewhere here: possibly Hodges thinks how Brady is not exactly Philip Roth, in terms of his sentence structures and turn of phrase.)
I'm not kidding, there's so much good stuff about this novel: the irony of the killer trying to provoke the cop into suicide, but actually saving him; the theme of neighbours and neighbourhoods — how the letter from the Brady (who has this whole hidden life) brings Hodges into contact with the outside world; the way the reader sees this psycho ice cream man cruising the neighbourhood but Hodges can't see the obvious. (love the bit where the mad old lady tells Hodges that the ice cream man is dodgy, but he writes it off as paranoia.)
There are a lot of shifts in tone, which King handles like an old pro: the story flows from genuinely scary stuff (like Annie Wilkes, the monster here is a conceivable one) into humour — like the scene where Brady goes to fix the blonde woman's computer.
So this is my theory: aged 66, Mr King is now at the top of his game, and we've got many decades of new novels to look forward to.
(I find myself thinking about Philip Roth as I'm reading Mr Mercedes — how he wrote all those great novels quite late on in his career. Roth is even mentioned somewhere here: possibly Hodges thinks how Brady is not exactly Philip Roth, in terms of his sentence structures and turn of phrase.)
I'm not kidding, there's so much good stuff about this novel: the irony of the killer trying to provoke the cop into suicide, but actually saving him; the theme of neighbours and neighbourhoods — how the letter from the Brady (who has this whole hidden life) brings Hodges into contact with the outside world; the way the reader sees this psycho ice cream man cruising the neighbourhood but Hodges can't see the obvious. (love the bit where the mad old lady tells Hodges that the ice cream man is dodgy, but he writes it off as paranoia.)
There are a lot of shifts in tone, which King handles like an old pro: the story flows from genuinely scary stuff (like Annie Wilkes, the monster here is a conceivable one) into humour — like the scene where Brady goes to fix the blonde woman's computer.
