I was recently in the hospital for a week, heavily doped up on pain medication (it wasn’t anything serious) and I needed a breezy, light book to pass the time. And lo and behold, the Kindle daily deal happened to feature a selection from my spooky frenemy, Stephen King!

That book was Mr. Mercedes, the first entry in what would become a trilogy revolving around a detective named Bill Hodges. The books are kind of notable in King’s ouvre for moving all the way out of horror and into the mystery/thriller genre, a space that many of his previous novels strayed pretty far into without entirely making the leap away from horror or the supernatural. Today we’re looking at Mr. Mercedes as well as its sequel, Finders Keepers.

The fact that I didn’t bother to read the third one is a spoiler.