Mr. Mercedes

This was really good, and greatly enhanced by the reading by Will Patton. This is such an effective thriller, I feel like recommending some Xanax along with it. As usual, King is so good at crafting the villain, it adds even more tension. Seeing things through Mr. Mercedes's eyes as well as Hodges (and occasionally from other points of view) creates both engagement and anxiety.

There were a couple times when Hodges drove me insane with his foolishness. I'd say the biggest hurdle with this story is accepting the decisions to keep the authorities uninvolved. It's an essential conceit to keep the story going, and all in all I can swallow it as the price of admission to a cat-and-mouse story between a mass murderer and a retired cop.

The other thing that can be hard to take is the graphically terrible things that happen. The story starts with such a nasty event, which is horrifying on its own, but also establishes real stakes for the rest of the tale. If THAT happened in chapter one, we understand that no one is safe (well, aside from the spoiler embedded in the book's subtitle I guess!)

In fact, if anyone is interested but a little wary, here are some high-level spoilers, including what happens with the dog: the dog is safe and sound; the concert full of tweens does not get blown up; however, some characters do die along the way