FINDER'S KEEPERS (Bill Hodges Trilogy #2) by Stephen King ⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Original review written August 12, 2019)

So, you’re reading a sequel to a book you quite enjoyed, and as you begin turning the page and turning the page, each casts you further into the backstory of two new characters tangentially related to the protagonist you came to know in the first entry. After a third of the book cruises by, you think “how much longer until-“, when finally, the original cast of characters make their entrance. You would think this amount of deviation from the main crew would lessen the rest of the book, but in true King fashion, the embracing of the unordinary elevates everything.

In this case, that backstory provides the new crime, new setting, and new villain for Hodges and the gang to almost be ‘copy and pasted’ right into. The book could almost continue on without them, living off of its own life and momentum. It would be interesting to see what world the rest of that story would inhabit, but in this case we have the Detective Hodges version.

The villain, Morris Bellamy, is not a good dude, though some combo of his articulate way of talking and obsessive behavior for the things he values make him weirdly not that unlikable. Part of him represents the lunatic within all of us, taking his fanaticism to a place we have to hope we don’t let ourselves get to.

Ultimately, this has the same feel as Mr. Mercedes; not his most amazing stuff, but one worth getting to for sure. There’s a few heart pounding moments, even a few scares, and a finish that tees up the end of the trilogy in an “oh snap!” kind of way. This is King at some of his most consistent work.

P.S. I just love how often King includes literary references. This one threw in nods to classics like John Updike and Philip Roth, and the YA dystopian Divergent. I know King believes in order to write you have to read, and it’s so interesting to see what books make it into his conscious awareness. That must be the best feeling in the world for an author.