Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It somehow feels kind of dirty, somehow unclean that deep in the heart of the crime fiction world lays the name Stephen King, the undisputed master of 20th and early 21st Century Horror. Yet for all the dirt, for all the feelings that must be overcome as any rational book reader must do, his second novel in the life of Ex-Cop and now Private Detective, Kermit Hodges is one that takes the idea of obsession down a very different route that plagued the writer during the days when Misery was such an enormous literary hit.
Obsession is a thought that carries his latest novel Finders Keepers beyond the rage of the deranged fan and into the powder keg of insanity of those who cannot abide the idea of patience, of those to whom the long wait is nothing more than a disease to be eradicated by the swift procurement by any means possible, even if it includes murder.
What Stephen King’s over riding responsibility to literature has been is one in which, like the late great James Herbert, is to offer a character that is so memorable, so absorbing, that what goes on around them is but putty to be shaped and moulded.
Whilst the book’s hero, Kermit Hodges, is your typical American world weary ex-cop given a new lease on life, it is in the eyes of the dangerous, single framed obsessed Morris Bellamy to which the reader cannot help be drawn to. Like Mr. King’s Annie Wilkes, Morris Bellamy is bordering of the compulsive when it comes to his favourite literary hero and it is an obsession that stands on the precipice of sanity as he realises the time he has invested in reading about his hero has all been for nothing.
Stephen King captures the obsession and the obsessed perfectly, in his unique way of handling the pressure of bringing so many characters into the world, he realises that once a book is out there it no longer belongs to you and yet the obsessed reader will still find a way to blame the author if their favourite character dies. It is that scary world in which obsession becomes addiction to which these characters belong and serves as great notice that whilst Stephen King’s fans will always want the best of Horror, sometimes ownership goes beyond the obsessed.
What it must come down to is that it is not up to the reader to dictate what the author writes, if the author wants to tackle a new genre, if they wish to suddenly start churning out romances when all they have been known for till that day is blood, guts and war, then that is up to them, for surely it is better to have Stephen King writing intelligent prose, captivating stories, than not to have him at all.
An enjoyable read, just a man who has diverted from being the master of one genre to learning the craft of another; best to lay your hands on it now, after all it truly is a case of Finders Keepers.
Stephen King’s Finders Keepers is available to buy now.
Ian D. Hall