Stephanie Jones: Book Review - Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

I have to give it to Stephen King – counting novels, non-fiction and short-story collections, he has published 64 books in a 40-year career and earned a spot as a lion of American fiction. From his roots in schlock-horror, a position that once had many critics unfairly dismissing him as lacking range, he has evolved to produce recent acclaimed work such as 11/22/63 and last year’s long-awaited sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.

Now comes #65, Mr Mercedes, a compelling thriller that is somehow weightier than its 400 pages allow and in which, despite its straightforward catch-a-killer premise, a world of horror lurks just beneath the surface. That fact is attributable to the author’s penchant for exploring the slimy underbelly of the human condition, and Mr Mercedes features one of the worst, a friendless mama’s boy who ploughs a tank-like SL500 into a crowd of immiserated folk waiting outside a job fair in the foggy chill of early dawn.

This is no whodunit. King has always been fond of subversion and here he turns up the tropes by not only immediately revealing the identity of the Mercedes Killer but taking us inside his cluttered mind, immediately introducing both protagonist and prey and hinting at how they intend to play their respective roles.

Bill Hodges is a retired homicide detective, and the Mercedes Killer is the most nagging of the four unsolved cases he left behind. Brady Hartsfield, the man behind the wheel, has gotten away with his crime but is too perverted to leave well alone, and in sending a taunting letter to Hodges he plans to set him on the same path to suicide followed by the woman who owned the lethal Mercedes.

It won’t be the first time well-laid plans go awry, and Hartsfield succeeds only in rousing the detective from his daytime TV funk, from which he calls in favours, renews contacts and surrounds himself with an unlikely band of comrades in the hunt for a “generically handsome” IT guy and ice cream van driver who is set on stepping up his death toll.

Mr Mercedes is compulsively readable not only for its propulsive plot but its balanced characterization. A romantic subplot involving Hodges is touching but not mawkish, and counters the protean nightmare of Hartsfield’s home life with an alcoholic mother who treats her surviving son as a substitute husband, with all the nastiness that implies.

Indeed, the small supporting cast is rich and rounded, exemplifying King’s knack for creating a scintillating biography for even peripheral characters; a choice anecdote from as far back as childhood is enough to reveal everything we need to know about who we’re dealing with.

King acknowledges the horror people can wreak while also mining the humour to be found in the unpleasant: a scene in which poisoned hamburger meat consumed by an unintended victim blends mirth and despair, and holds the promise that in this story, wrongdoers will get their just deserts. Mr Mercedes is another gem in the bibliography of a master.