Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

by:  Stephen King
published by:  Scribner
publish date:  June 3, 2014

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.

So it's been a long time since I've really really liked a Stephen King book.  When I got done with this one, it was like "OMG Thank YOU!!"  I was so excited for Stephen King, which is ridiculous because he's a grown successful man, but I've felt like he's been off somewhere for a long time, and now he's BACK!  Other people probably don't feel that way because this wasn't a horror novel, but whatever.

The other thing that made me happy about this book was that it was the marriage of several things that make me happy.  First, it was a crime novel, those are my favorite.  Secondly, it was written by Stephen King, he's an excellent writer and doing a straight up crime novel was awesome.  Third, the audiobook was read by Will Patton, seriously, he's the best.

The characters in the book are awesome.  If nothing else, King can paint the portrait of a character like no other.  Just when I was kinda sad that I was done with this book, I found out that it was a trilogy, so I get to visit with these characters again.  I was really happy about that.

I would recommend this book to all the crime readers.  Even if you aren't a Stephen King fan because you don't like horror, try this one out, because it's not really a horror novel.  This one is pretty much a straight up crime/private eye type book.