Stephen King | YogisDen.us

“Later” is one of Stephen King’s old school thriller, horror, books kind of based on cheap paperbacks. King can spin a yarn better than anybody in my opinion. We start out with kind of cute little boy who has this thing where he can talk with the recently dead.

So it starts out kind of cute and fluffy and as the novel progresses, the cute becomes less, and things get strange and then they get scary and all the sudden the novel hangs a hard left and sprouts knives, axes, teeth, and chainsaws and I swear it turns again right back at the reader. All before we know what is happening.

And after the story’s climax, King drops something else on us. Not a horror, but something else, just as horrible.

I finished it with like, what just happened here?

I strongly recommend this book. I got my copy at the library.

This is a little bit of a change for Stephen King. This is a detective novel and a darned good one at that.

A man drives a stolen Mercedes Benz into a crowd somewhere in mid America a few years ago and kills several of them. He leaves behind a mask and hardly anything else and is known only by his media given nickname Mr Mercedes. The lead detective on the case Bill Hodges works on it for a time and then retires without solving it.

His retirement is not going very well and gets so bad he considers suicide from time to time. Mr Mercedes decides to try and nudge him over the deep end and sends Hodges a letter taunting him. That gets Hodges back involved in the case on an unofficial basis.

The story, like in a good detective novel, has lots of twists and turns and unexpected events. Hodges finds an unlikely pair to team up with as they try and solve the case. Mr Mercedes himself is quite the interesting guy and it is entertaining to see point/counterpoint as the story develops.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and give it five stars out of five!

This book is the first of a planned trilogy. I can’t wait for the next installment.