Mr Mercedes | review by Rafe McGregor

Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

Hodder & Stoughton, 416pp, £20.00, June 2014, ISBN 9781444788624

 

This review was first published in November 2014, in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction 49, following what I hope will be my longest ever absence from the magazine (a three-year hiatus).

 

In June 1999 Stephen King was run over by a Dodge minivan while on his daily four-mile walk. Three years later, he was still unable to sit down for long periods without severe pain and announced his intention to stop writing. Eight years later, he wrote that ‘the force of my invention has slowed down a lot’, a tragic admission for a prolific author whose work has ranged across the horror, science fiction, fantasy, crime, and thriller genres. Mr Mercedes is King’s sixth full-length novel since his accident. Like some of his best work – Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982) and Misery (1987) to name but two – there is no supernatural element at play and the narrative follows a retired detective’s attempt to catch a spree killer before he strikes again. Like Duma Key (2008), the novel is subdivided into very short numbered sections and the eight named parts are really chapters, varying from one to forty-three sub-sections each, which (a few excepted) tell the tale from either the protagonist or antagonist’s point of view.

Mr Mercedes does not plumb the existential depths of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, nor is it likely to have the popular appeal of The Stand (1978) or The Shining (1977), but it isn’t the work of a writer whose inventive force is flagging either. From the dramatic yet restrained opening, in which a grey Mercedes emerges from the fog in as frightening a manner as any mythical monster, to the plausible handling of the various plot twists, there is no evidence that King’s creativity is on the wane. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mr Mercedes is its intra-textuality, King’s explicit and implicit references to works previous and forthcoming, with recurring symbols and motifs from his extensive oeuvre. The murder weapon recalls, of course, both Christine (1983) and From a Buick 8 (2002) and the killer’s disguises as a clown and ice cream vendor, It (1986). The final stage of the story, which places the detective in an unlikely trio of crime-fighters, is reminiscent of The Dark Tower series (eight books published from 1982 to 2012). There are also at least two allusions Revival, King’s next novel, which is due for publication in November. Mr Mercedes is, to some extent, a homage to King’s own work, but with such an illustrious career upon which to draw, the gesture is long overdue rather than self-indulgent.

 

Mr Mercedes features the first appearance of Holly Gibney, who subsequently became a serial character and is the protagonist of King’s latest novel, Never Flinch, which was published last month.