Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Kermit Hodges is in pain, emotionally, physically and spiritually, he is running out of time to really get to the bottom of his most dangerous investigation, what really went on in the mind of Brady Hartsfield when he became a mad and psychotic killer hell bent on destruction. It is a case that has had Stephen King fans perhaps slightly bemused by the turn round in genre direction in the last couple of years but one that culminates in a novel that could stem out of the writer’s classic period, one that delves into the heart of the confines of the mind and how such things as telekinesis and mental projection can just as horrifying, just as filled with nightmares as the appearance of werewolves, psychotic clowns and vampires.
The stock in trade, the horror genre is without doubt the long length of fertile ground in which Stephen King has ploughed most of his life and it may have seemed strange to leave the visual monsters behind, to take them away and lock them up behind steel bars of possible indifference by his fans as he went into the world of the detective novel.
You cannot keep a good monster down though and not all monsters have pointed teeth, are possessed cars or come crawling out of the dark like slime and ooze from a badly polluted lake, monsters still exist, they still attempt to kill, to cause harm and perhaps drive people to suicide. These are the monsters that live with us every day, they find a small hole in which to burrow in, in which to grow and infect, like a tape worm living of the guts of malnourished child, they burrow under the skin until they kill the host.
Monsters are Stephen King’s weapons and in End of Watch, the final part of the Kermit Hodges/Brady Hartsfield trilogy, the monster is unleashed from his coma and it is a frightening prospect to read on. Stephen King captures the emotion of teen suicide with careful words, the ease in which some people can find comfort and even sick joy in the sensitive tangle of others, these are the monsters who crowd the everyday, who find the fantasy of destruction even more chilling than the vampire and the clown.
After many decades of thrilling readers with out and out horror, the detective novel is one that his right to open before his fans, and whilst many may have missed the gore and the spellbinding, the trips into fantasy and the fragility of human experience, of aliens, of vampires and revenge; the story of Kermit Hodges battling the worst kind of man has been illuminating and End of Watch a truly emotive story that will have the reader hanging on every word.
Stephen King’s End Of Watch is available to order from Write Blend, South Road, Waterloo.
Ian D. Hall