“He leaves his house with no premonition that he won’t be back.”
The opening scene is great; vivid and deeply humane, where two lonesome, jobless people in recession America meet while waiting in line for a job expo. It’s depressing and heartfelt, almost political in a good way. Then disaster strikes. A man-made disaster, created on purpose with the aid of a stolen Mercedes.
Later, a retired homicide detective named Bill Hodges receives a chatty letter from the ‘perk’. Does he still wonder who did it? Trouble dealing with retired life? You bet …
The ‘perk’, surprisingly, is introduced as a character in his own right in the following chapter, rather than kept in the shadows. Over the course of a job conversation with a colleague we learn more about him than the letter revealed. Including the fact that he hates everyone but knows how to adapt.
Initial reaction: the focus on the woman who owned the car used for the murder slows down the proceedings. It later turns out that this focus is warranted, of course. Not least since her sister will become a major character.
A romance thriller, what was the odds of King writing one of those? Well, it’s more than that of course. The portrait of the killer is every bit as twisted as the love affair is cute, revealing a young man with no doubt serious issues but few redeeming qualities. And yet surprisingly human in some of his reactions.
It’s also sprinkled with technical info and computer tidbits that feel surprisingly up to date. King seems to have done some serious homework on this one.
A particularly shocking sequence around half-time extinguishes any “fears” that King is writing a normal thriller. A flat, laconic summary of a defining event in Brady’s life continues this trend. It’s a tough read, especially since Brady’s perspective includes a crass, sickening sort of jocularity.
The dark turn veers into a nose dive as things go from bad to worse. When a peek into Brady’s world view around three quarters in view sums up nihilism as well as anything you’ve ever read (history is aptly described as ‘scar tissue’), the romance detective novel association is just a vague memory, although the introduction of a psychologically challenged woman and her swift friendship with Hodges’s friend Jerome brighten up the proceedings somewhat.
The stakes are as high as in a “normal” thriller, though, and a race against time provides suspense to the very end. And by suspense I mean Suspense. This one nearly gave me a heart attack.