JUNE 2015 - AudioFile
Narrator Will Patton takes the best Stephen King novel in years and turns it into an audio masterpiece. Patton sets the mood of greed, desperation, and frustration with an astounding delivery that does the work of a half-dozen actors. Switching vocal styles as easily as a chameleon changes color, Patton portrays an elderly author and the man who murders him over his treatment of one of his characters. Patton takes the listener on a journey of intrigue as a teenage boy finds the murdered writer's unpublished works 35 years later—just as the killer is released from prison. Listeners may double-check to see how many narrators are performing this work. But it's just Patton, and he's more than enough. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2016 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/20/2015
Bill Hodges, the retired detective hero of King’s Mr. Mercedes (2014), stars in this taut thriller about the thin line separating fandom from fanaticism. In 1978, Morris Bellamy murders his literary idol, John Rothstein (clearly modeled on J.D. Salinger), and pilfers more than 100 notebooks filled with Rothstein’s unpublished writing. After serving 35 years in the clink for another crime, Bellamy returns to the Midwestern everyville of Northfield to reclaim the stashed notebooks—only to discover that they’ve fallen into the hands of teenage Rothstein fan Pete Saubers, who’s in dire need of Hodges’s protective services when the murder-minded Bellamy comes after him. Bellamy is one of King’s creepiest creations—a literate and intelligent character whom any passionate reader will both identify with and be repelled by. His relentless pursuit of a treasure that his twisted thinking has determined is rightfully his generates the nail-biting suspense that’s the hallmark of King’s best work. A sharp closing twist suggests Hodges will be back. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents (June)
Tampa Bay Times
King may have left out the supernatural in Mr. Mercedes, but his gifts for creating thoroughly believable characters and thrumming suspense are in full play. He keeps raising the stakes and ratcheting up the violence, and just when you think everything is settled there's one spine-icing little turn on the very last page.
Seattle Times
No one can create a villain quite like King. . . . [A]ll the elements come together in a very public, potentially explosive finale (with a surprising post script). King fans may find themselves furiously turning pages long into the night.
Miami Herald
"A taut, calibrated thriller . . . The majority of the book is merciless and unforgiving, and the scariest thing about it is how plausible the whole scenario is."
USA Today
"The new book is sogood, being at least mildly obsessed with it is understandable. The finest thing about it, however, is thatthe author has another story to tell before the finale of this excellent series.
The Washington Post Elizabeth Hand
Praise for Finders Keepers
“Stephen King’s superb new stay-up-all-night thriller, Finders Keepers, is a sly,often poignant tale of literary obsession that recalls the themes of his classic 1987 novel Misery…a love letter to the joys of reading and to American literature… wonderful, scary, moving.
People Magazine
A trimmer-than-usual King, but that doesn't mean he skimps on the suspense and spine-tingling chills.
|Los Angeles Times
A showdown between good and evil that characterizes the best of King's work, regardless of genre.
Christian Science Monitor
Think of Mr. Mercedes as an AC/DC song: uncluttered, chugging with momentum, and a lot harder to pull off than it looks. . . . King has written a hot rod of a novel,perfect for a few summer days at the pool. Mercedes-Benz commands drivers to demand ‘the best or nothing.’ In pop-fiction terms, that motto still applies to Stephen King, too. With apologies to AC/DC, the highway to hell never felt so fun.
Washington Post
"On one level, Mr. Mercedes is an expertly crafted example of the classic race-against-the-clock thriller. On another, it is a novel of depth and character enriched throughout by the grace notes King provides in such seemingly effortless profusion. It is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A fast-paced cat-and-mouse game between Hodges, the motley group of unlikely heroes that he assembles, and the Mercedes Killer.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
King creates such vivid characters—people you can picture yourself drinking a beer with or inviting over for lunch. So when he puts them in great peril, and that includes Jerome’s family and pet dog and the Mercedes’ owner’s family, it’s a race against time . . .
The New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
Associated Press
Praise for Mr. Mercedes
"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."
Boston Herald
Hartfield is sensitive, sympathetic and one of King’s most realistic characters. He is a lot like Norman Bates from Psycho, in the worst ways imaginable.You can add Hartfield to the list of great King villains, alongside the shape-shifting monster Pennywise from It and the hypnotic vampire Kurt Barlow from Salem’s Lot.
Booklist
The most straight-up mystery-thriller of [King’s] career…Pretty darn fresh.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
An oh-so-dark mystery that never shuts the door on love, loss and, possibly, redemption.
People Magazine
A trimmer-than-usual King, but that doesn't mean he skimps on the suspense and spine-tingling chills.
Los Angeles Times
A showdown between good and evil that characterizes the best of King's work, regardless of genre.
Booklist
The most straight-up mystery-thriller of [King’s] career…Pretty darn fresh.
Miami Herald
"A taut, calibrated thriller . . . The majority of the book is merciless and unforgiving, and the scariest thing about it is how plausible the whole scenario is."
The New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
Washington Post
"On one level, Mr. Mercedes is an expertly crafted example of the classic race-against-the-clock thriller. On another, it is a novel of depth and character enriched throughout by the grace notes King provides in such seemingly effortless profusion. It is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses."
USA Today
King deftly takes elements of hard-boiled mysteries and puts a fresh spin on them.
Associated Press Staff
Praise for Mr. Mercedes
"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."
New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
Library Journal
04/15/2015
What would you do if you found a buried treasure? Thirteen-year-old Peter Saubers asks himself this very question when he finds an old trunk buried under a tree. His family has fallen on hard times following the economic downturn in 2008. Aside from a relatively small amount of money in the chest, there are over 100 handwritten notebooks. Peter realizes that they were penned by John Rothstein, a renowned novelist who was murdered long before Peter was born. Peter was one of the millions who had been touched by Rothstein's works. Also influenced by the novels is Morris Bellamy, an obsessed fan who killed the author years ago and buried the trunk. He's in prison for a different crime, and about to be paroled. Now the protagonists King introduced in Mr. Mercedes—Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson—are charged with protecting Peter and his family from Bellamy. VERDICT King's many, many fans will want this, especially those who loved Misery, but the second volume in King's projected trilogy will appeal to anyone who enjoys suspense and action, or anyone who finds enlightenment in reading about the internal struggle between right and wrong. It's not necessary to have read the previous book to enjoy this one. [See Prepub Alert, 11/25/14.]—Elizabeth Masterson, Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC
JUNE 2015 - AudioFile
Narrator Will Patton takes the best Stephen King novel in years and turns it into an audio masterpiece. Patton sets the mood of greed, desperation, and frustration with an astounding delivery that does the work of a half-dozen actors. Switching vocal styles as easily as a chameleon changes color, Patton portrays an elderly author and the man who murders him over his treatment of one of his characters. Patton takes the listener on a journey of intrigue as a teenage boy finds the murdered writer's unpublished works 35 years later—just as the killer is released from prison. Listeners may double-check to see how many narrators are performing this work. But it's just Patton, and he's more than enough. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2016 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-04-02
There are suggestions throughout this second installment of a planned trilogy that King's motley, appealing trio of detectives from Mr. Mercedes (2014) have some bad juju in their collective future that may make the case here look like a relative afternoon at the mall. As in Misery and The Shining, King swan dives into the looniness lurking at both ends of the writer-reader transaction. The loony in this particular joint is a pale, red-lipped sociopath named Morris Bellamy, who, in 1978, robs and murders his favorite novelist, John Rothstein, because he can't forgive him for making his lead character, Jimmy Gold, go into advertising in the last published installment of his epic trilogy. Yet along with the cash Bellamy collects during his crime are several notebooks comprising a rough draft for a fourth installment suggesting an outcome for Gold that Bellamy finds potentially more satisfying. Bellamy buries a trunk with the money and notebooks for safekeeping, but a 35-year prison hitch interrupts his plans. By the time Bellamy is paroled in 2014, Pete Saubers, a high school student who's something of a Rothstein aficionado himself, has excavated the trunk, sent the money in anonymously labeled parcels to his financially strapped parents, and stashed the notebooks for a possible sale on the proverbial rainy day—whose somewhat premature arrival comes, alas, at roughly the same time Bellamy appears in the Sauberses' life. Fortunately, Pete's back is covered by the odd-squad private detective team of portly, kindly ex-cop Bill Hodges, wisecracking digital whiz Jerome Robinson, and Hodges' phobic-savant researcher Holly Gibney, who first pooled their talents in Mr. Mercedes—a book whose central crime, the murder and maiming of innocents by a luxury car, looms over this sequel like a stubborn shadow. This being a King novel, the narrative hums and roars along like a high-performance vehicle, even though there are times when its readers may find themselves several tics ahead of the book's plot developments. But such qualms are overcome by the plainspoken, deceptively simple King style, which has once again fashioned a rip-snorting entertainment; one that also works as a sneaky-smart satire of literary criticism and how even the most attentive readers can often miss the whole point behind making up characters and situations. Reading a King novel as engrossing as this is a little like backing in a car with parking assist: after a while, you just take your hands off the wheel and the pages practically turn themselves.
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