“He just sits there, but inside he’s the same “I was sure of it then and I’m sure of it now,” he tells Holly early in End of Watch. From the outset, we know, as Hodges suspects, that there is someĬonnection. Like the one that the seemingly comatose Hartsfield has in his hospital bedroom. A clue may reside in a console called a Zappit found at the scene of the crime, much Goaded a woman into killing herself by infecting her computer. The woman and her quadriplegicĭaughter were financially secure, having received a large insurance settlement, and they lived comfortably together.

But to Hodges it does not seem to make sense. Police see the matter as straightforward and are not willing to pursue it. One of the victims from the original car crash, the injured woman mentioned above, has been found dead with her mother in an apparent murder-suicide. End of Watch picks up the narrative where Mr. Incapable of standing trial, he has appeared to dwell in a “twilight world” at a local brain injury clinic. It was Holly who stopped Hartsfield, memorably smashing his head with a ball-bearing-filled sock Mercedes is essential.Ī retired detective, Bill Hodges, with the assistance of the autistic, computer-savvy and quirky Holly Gibney, collared Hartsfield just as he was about toīlow himself up at a rock concert packed with teenagers. Understanding the troubled background and the malevolent power of the mass murderer, Hartsfield, reading Mr. (If you cannot read the three books, you could skip Finders Keepers, even thoughįor plot and character development I think it is the best novel in the series as a crime thriller, but not essential for reading End of Watch.) For Providing a powerful symmetry before pivoting back to the present. Starts on that day, though from a different lens that tracks two emergency medical technicians arriving at the carnage site to pick up a horribly damaged woman, Mercedes and plowing into a line of helpless people attending a job fair – killing eight and injuring many more. Mercedes began in 2009 with a rabid killer, Brady Hartsfield, stealing a grey For those unfamiliar with the trilogy, Mr. Police with a reasonable explanation for the resolution though we, the readers, know that the conventions of a police procedural cannot explain what has As a crime novel, End of Watch generally works because King finds a way to retreat and provide the Of horror that draws upon tropes of the Gothic.

He did pretty well for over two and a half volumes, then he veered into his comfort zone, the realm King would confine himself to the genre’s conventions. Mercedes (2014) followed the next year with Finders Keepers and concluding with End of Watch (Scribner, 2016) – I wondered how long When I began reading the first installment of Stephen King’s hard-boiled crime trilogy – the critically acclaimed and Edgar Award-winning Mr.

Stephen king end of watch series