Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy #2) by Stephen King

Wake up, genius.

The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

Enjoyable, but not so much as the first book. Maybe because I kept waiting for Hodges and company to show up, and they don’t until well into the book. And it wasn’t until they did they I was able to completely get into the Saubers/Morris story. I do wonder if the book would have worked better with completely all new characters, thus avoiding preconceived expectations.

I suppose something that the book didn’t have going for it is that it’s very much a crime/mystery sort of book, and I’m not normally drawn to them. That I enjoyed it as much as I did says a lot about King’s writing. Some may not enjoy his dense world building, or his cavalcade of characters, but those two things are what probably draw me to his writing more than anything else. Well, and the horror, too. This book gives you one, if not a great deal of the other. I can deal with that.

There are hints that lead to the third book in the trilogy, and I’m glad to read that it’s very much a Hodges book. Looking forward to reading it.




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