Mr. Mercedes
Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy #1)
By: Stephen King
This was my very first Stephen King book.
I’m not a big horror fan so I was hesitant to read it, but it’s been sitting on my shelf for years so to celebrate Stephen King’s birthday on September 21, I decided to give it a shot.
True to many other readers’ comments, this is different from his MO in that it was more thriller than horror. It was not gruesome, though several people die. There was also no supernatural element.
While I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of gore, I was equally disappointed in the abundance of profanity. I had a physical copy and thus did not count, but I would say it’s easily over a hundred f- and s-words, some c-words, and not to mention the too-frequent use of the n-word (this was used only by the Mr. Mercedes character to portray another side of his evilness, but I still don’t like having to read it).
Another note on the content: Mr. Mercedes, such a stand-up guy, also has a creepy incestuous-esque relationship with his mother that isn’t overly descriptive but even a mild description is disturbing.
For these content reasons I don’t think I’ll be finishing the series.
I was also notified that this series was made into a TV series but that has a profanity rating of ‘severe’ so I also won’t be able to continue the series in that way.
Summary
The basic premise of this thriller is that retired detective, Bill Hodges, is not, after 6 months in, handling his retirement well. When he receives a mysterious note from the supposed Mercedes Killer— a case he never solved— he is all too eager to spend his free time investigating.
The book opens with the scene of the Mercedes Killer running a stolen vehicle— a Mercedes Benz obvs— into crowds of people waiting in line for a job fair. He killed 8 people (including a mother and baby) and injured many others. To the police’s dismay, he got away and left few traces to follow up on.
Bill, with the help of his lawn-boy, Jerome, and eventually the help of a mentally unstable but very intelligent woman with some social tics named Holly, goes on a mission to nail the elusive Mr. Mercedes before he can act on his urge to kill more people.
Comments
I didn’t particularly feel drawn to Bill Hodge’s character because he seemed a bit flat (not physically.. ha), but I did appreciate that even though he was the stereotypical overweight police officer, he did still have some investigative skills. He is no Scully and Hitchcock, but I kinda of pictured him that way and felt somewhat surprised when he did something right.
I did really like Jerome and Holly. They were a lot more interesting and created more depth in the cast and the character interactions because of their idiosyncrasies and backgrounds.
Holly is in her forties, but it was hard to picture her that way because of her child-like voice.
Jerome, a smart high-schooler with his sights set on Harvard, had a secondary ‘persona’ where he often changed his vernacular. I’m not sure how to describe it in the right terms. But here’s an example of how he sounds when he switches to ‘Tyrone Feelgood Delight’: “No, suh! I is black. I spends mah spare time shootin hoops and runnin on de cinder track at de high school. Us black fellas is mighty fast, as de whole worl’ knows.”
It’s something Jerome (who is black if you didn’t realize that) voluntarily decides to do in a good-humored way, but I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about it. These days it seems like I’m supposed to take offense because is it appropriation? I don’t know! Maybe it doesn’t matter. Beats me.
What made this thriller a bit different than ones I typically read is that it is more of a cat and mouse book. We already know who the killer is—the ice cream man… because of course we need our deepest fears to be realized and perpetuated through books like this. The detective doesn’t know, but as a reader there is nothing for us to really figure out.
The main suspense is the race against time. Can the detective and ‘his team’ figure it all out before the clock runs out and thousands of people die?
The last chunk of the book definitely has a lot of suspense to it but the beginning has some slow parts as we get the full context and setting.
King made such a big deal about Mr. Mercedes using the word ‘perk’ instead of ‘perp’ and that being one of the ‘tells’ they would have if they caught the right person, but after all the suspense and hullabaloo around the word (it’s even in the Goodreads summary), Hodges just randomly decides to forget it and angrily correct the guy in a message and reveal that he’s using the wrong word for perp. Turns out we can get him without his identifier. Which is fine, but a bit anti-climactic.
Can the mother really be such an alcoholic without dying after so many years of it? I don’t understand her life and I have no idea how to visualize what kind of person she is. ‘Dysfunction’ is a mild way to describe her and her son.
Recommendation
This is a hard book to offer a recommendation on because I am not a pre-existing Stephen King fan. I see mixed reviews on this book from his fans so it may be more helpful to see how they compare this book to his other books because I cannot offer anything to that extent.
I was told on a book reader Facebook page that this was a good first book to read of his, especially if I didn’t like horror. Many people said this series was one of their favorites.
My only recommendation is that if you don’t like profanity or sexual content, pass on this book. It’s just a lot to get through for a good story. Not worth it.
Other people have complained about his writing and all the elements that are unrealistic. Personally, I didn’t find much of that distracting in terms of dialogue or plot lines. Maybe I was too distracted by being annoyed at the language to get annoyed by anything else.
Even though this wasn’t a true horror novel, it kinda confirms for me why I don’t really read any horror books. Imagine if this had blood spurting everywhere on top of all the other things!
If you can recommend a Stephen King book to me that’s not too disturbing and doesn’t have much profanity, I would maybe give him another try, but I think I got to add King to my do-not-read author list.
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