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Finders Keepers
King tweeted yesterday that Mr. Mercedes is the first novel in a projected trilogy. The second book will be called Finders Keepers, due out next year.
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“Wake up, genius.” So begins King’s instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, a Salinger-like icon 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 Sauberg 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.
Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life—for good, for bad, forever.
Library Journal
treasure? Thirteen-year-old Peter Saubers asks himself this very
question when he finds an old trunk buried under a tree. His family has
fallen on hard times following the economic downturn in 2008. Aside from
a relatively small amount of money in the chest, there are over 100
hand-written notebooks. Peter realizes that they were penned by John
Rothstein, a renowned novelist who was murdered long before Peter was
born. Peter was one of the millions who had been touched by Rothstein's
works. Also influenced by the novels is Morris Bellamy, an obsessed fan
who killed the author years ago and buried the trunk. He's in prison for
a different crime, and about to be paroled. Now the protagonists King
introduced in Mr. Mercedes-Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson-are charged with protecting Peter and his family from
Bellamy.- -VERDICT King's many, many fans will want this, especially
those who loved Misery, but the second volume in King's projected
trilogy will appeal to anyone who enjoys suspense and action, or anyone
who finds enlightenment in reading about the internal struggle between
right and wrong. It's not necessary to have read the previous book to
enjoy this one. [See Prepub Alert, 11/25/14.]-Elizabeth Masterson,
Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC © Copyright 2015. Library
Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly
of King's Mr. Mercedes (2014), stars in this taut thriller about the
thin line separating fandom from fanaticism. In 1978, Morris Bellamy
murders his literary idol, John Rothstein (clearly modeled on J.D.
Salinger), and pilfers more than 100 notebooks filled with Rothstein's
unpublished writing. After serving 35 years in the clink for another
crime, Bellamy returns to the Midwestern everyville of Northfield to
reclaim the stashed notebooks-only to discover that they've fallen into
the hands of teenage Rothstein fan Pete Saubers, who's in dire need of
Hodges's protective services when the murder-minded Bellamy comes after
him. Bellamy is one of King's creepiest creations-a literate and
intelligent character whom any passionate reader will both identify with
and be repelled by. His relentless pursuit of a treasure that his
twisted thinking has determined is rightfully his generates the
nail-biting suspense that's the hallmark of King's best work. A sharp
closing twist suggests Hodges will be back. Agent: Chuck Verrill,
Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews 2015 April #2There are
suggestions throughout this second installment of a planned trilogy
that King's motley, appealing trio of detectives from Mr. Mercedes
(2014) have some bad juju in their collective future that may make the
case here look like a relative afternoon at the mall. As in Misery and
The Shining, King swan dives into the looniness lurking at both ends of
the writer-reader transaction. The loony in this particular joint is a
pale, red-lipped sociopath named Morris Bellamy, who, in 1978, robs and
murders his favorite novelist, John Rothstein, because he can't forgive
him for making his lead character, Jimmy Gold, go into advertising in
the last published installment of his epic trilogy. Yet along with the
cash Bellamy collects during his crime are several notebooks comprising a
rough draft for a fourth installment suggesting an outcome for Gold
that Bellamy finds potentially more satisfying. Bellamy buries a trunk
with the money and notebooks for safekeeping, but a 35-year pr ison
hitch interrupts his plans. By the time Bellamy is paroled in 2014, Pete
Saubers, a high school student who's something of a Rothstein
aficionado himself, has excavated the trunk, sent the money in
anonymously labeled parcels to his financially strapped parents, and
stashed the notebooks for a possible sale on the proverbial rainy
day—whose somewhat premature arrival comes, alas, at roughly the same
time Bellamy appears in the Sauberses' life. Fortunately, Pete's back is
covered by the odd-squad private detective team of portly, kindly
ex-cop Bill Hodges, wisecracking digital whiz Jerome Robinson, and
Hodges' phobic-savant researcher Holly Gibney, who first pooled their
talents in Mr. Mercedes—a book whose central crime, the murder and
maiming of innocents by a luxury car, looms over this sequel like a
stubborn shadow. This being a King novel, the narrative hums and roars
along like a high-performance vehicle, even though there are times when
its readers may find themselves several tics ahead of the book's plot
developments. But such qualms are overcome by the plainspoken,
deceptively simple King style, which has once again fashioned a
rip-snorting entertainment; one that also works as a sneaky-smart satire
of literary criticism and how even the most attentive readers can often
miss the whole point behind making up characters and situations.
Reading a King novel as engrossing as this is a little like backing in a
car with parking assist: after a while, you just take your hands off
the wheel and the pages practically turn themselves. Copyright Kirkus
2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
Booklist
This thematic bookend to Misery
(1987) features another very disappointed literary fan. In fact, in the
opening scene, down-on-his-luck Morris Bellamy shoots to death John
Rothstein, the reclusive Updike/Salinger amalgam who crushed Morris by
letting his iconic character Jimmy Gold “sell out” at the end of the
famous Gold trilogy. Morris makes off with Rothstein’s cash and, even
better, dozens of unpublished manuscripts, but before he can do anything
but stash them, he ends up in the slammer. Enter young Pete Saubers,
whose poverty-stricken family is rescued when he finds the stash and
secretly uses the money to right their financial ship. Only when it runs
out does the now 17-year-old Pete decide to sell the Rothstein
notebooks. Eventually the crime-stopping trio from Mr. Mercedes (2014)
returns (if you haven’t read it, they pop up here rather abruptly) to
protect Pete when Morris comes after his property—with a hatchet. As
with Mercedes, the small-time feel creates an amiability even
when things slow down or when the blood starts to gush. King’s got his
fedora back on, and it’s great fun to watch him have a good time.
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: For those one or two mystery nuts who’ve kept from King because of the—ick!—horror, here’s a handy on-ramp.
— Daniel KrausYA/General Interest: Two young main characters—Pete, 17, and Jerome, early college-age—make this an even better YA fit than most King. —Daniel Kraus
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/06/this-weeks-cover-inside-quentin-tarantinos-bloody-brutal-new-western-hateful
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/books/review-stephen-king-leaps-through-time-in-finders-keepers.html?ref=arts&_r=0
http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/finders-keepers-stephen-kings-sequel-to-mr-mercedes-is-a-nail-biter/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2015/06/01/stephen-king-finders-keepers-book-review/28018583/
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