Reviews with content warning for Blood - Mr. Mercedes

This book was high octane insanity and, to me, the true definition of a page turner. I mean, the book starts with a mass killing of eight people at a job fair, which is already fucking devastating.
We are then introduced to Kermit William Hodges- Bill to his friend (Kermie, to me). Bill is a recently retired police officer and detective who originally investigated the Mr. Mercedes Massacre, but, did not catch the perpetrator.
Bill is lauded for his tireless police work for 40 years, and is awarded many commendations for his work.
However, he receives the ire of the killer who establishes a communication with Bill to taunt him.
The killer, I was shocked to see that we learned very early on, is a near 30 year old named Brady. Now, I think Brady is a very well written character, but, holy goddamn fuck do I hate Brady. He is a megalomaniac, he is a sociopath, psychopath, misanthrope, racist, incestuous piece of garbage, who commits murders because he is mad at the world, he is a pitiful schmuck.
I think that he is a good character to hate, and a strong villain, but, I don't know that he ultimately stacks up to the other villains in King's works like Pennywise, or Randall Flagg- but, I also don't know that he was supposed to. Those characters are supernatural entities, and villains intent on world destruction or the countless murder of hundreds of thousands of people. Brady is not that, what he is, however, is scarier, in my opinion, because he is a clear representation of the wave of mass killers and spree killers. The events that start this book and the plan that Brady very nearly pulls off (until Holly fucks him up) are all too real and are very uncomfortable to read.
As well, his personal life is very disturbing as he on many instances has incestuous trysts with his own mother, which are sickening to read. His mother is one of those characters who is played mainly in the background, but, the fucked-uppedness of her behavior toward Brady and the fact that she committed filicide is truly stomach churning. I feel like Brady would have been a fucking terrible person without her influence, but, the fact that she so readily pushed him past the edges of societal and natural normalcy and so on is sickening.

I thought that Bill was a great character. I liked that he was shown to be a retired detective who abides by his old ways, even though the world around him and society around him is leaving all of that behind. He is very much a Phillip Marlowe like character, but, if he acted much much more illegally in pursuit of justice and the truth.
I like the character development that starts with Bill actively thinking about suicide with his dad's service pistol, and how he is brought back in to the world he knows. It is a trope we have seen time and time again- the recent retiree is brough back in for one more job!
But, what I liked about Bill is that he is not a super detective. He makes mistakes, he fucks up, misses things at points. He seems more believable than a character who just constantly knows the answer to everything as it happens.

I will say that a lot of the side characters were interesting to me, but, not necessarily stand outs. I only really liked Jerome and Holly- two characters who ultimately end up thwarting Brady's last terroristic act. I really liked the shading of Jerome's character arc, where he is an extremely intelligent and studious 17 year old, who has the whole world in front of him. He was written in such a way that I just wanted to see him succeed.
Holly, from what I understand is a more divisive character in the King oeuvre. I actually liked Holly's character a lot as well. I appreciate that she is portrayed and said to be emotionally unstable as a direct result of a very overbearing mother and bullying in her youth, on top of (at the time) likely undiagnosed mental illness.
I will say that I did not like how she seemingly flips out of all of her trauma and personality traits to quickly become a stalwart heroine. I didn't quite believe that, but, oh well. I really liked her character from what I read and I am interested in learning more about her in the future. Plus, she fucked Brady up, so hell yeah.

Now to the parts of this book that I did not super enjoy.
The first is what is the super racist accent that Jerome (a black teen) takes at points. It is super uncomfortable to read and I will be honest, whenever I saw the this speech, I skipped ahead to get by it. Not sure why King loves including stuff like this, but, man, sttttoooooooooop.

The next part is the death of Janey. Now, Janey is the niece of Olivia Trelawney who is the owner of the Mercedes which was stolen and used in the commission of the murder spree that kicks off the book. (Look at that quick summary!).
Janey becomes the typical love interest of the story, while also starting to assist Bill with his investigation. This comes to a head when Janey's grandma dies and Bill attends the funeral with her. While there Bill's car is rigged with plastic explosives by Brady who is intent on killing him. In a last minute switch Janey takes Bill's fedora and offers to drive Bill's car while Bill goes with Holly and her (horrrrrrible) mother. Brady mistakes the silhouette for Bill and ends up detonating the explosives.
Janey is killed in the ensuing explosion, which is sad, but also, how many things had to go "right" for this death to occur? When I read it I was immediately thinking "....what???" It just seemed so silly and I really had to suspend disbelief in order to accept this.

The last 80 pages of this book had be in a chokehold, that is for goddamn sure. I was completely enthralled. Seeing as how the deaths had occurred so far in this book, I was unsure if King would actually go through and have a suicide bombing in a concert. It was actually very scary to read. There were times throughout this section where I felt like I couldn't read fast enough to get the story in to my brain fast enough!
I am very excited to read the next stories in the Kermie Hodges trilogy. I hope that the characters who were established in this book get a little bit more fleshed out in the subsequent books.
As I said before, and will again, we are lucky to live in a time where Stephen King writes books, holy fuck.

Content Warnings

renee_will's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I don't want to spend any more time thinking about this book, tbh, but I'd just like to say that it is easily the worst of King's works I've ever read. I truly do not understand the positive reviews for it, it's baffling.

Aside from the frankly dull police procedural plot, it is just deeply offensive. The language is homophobic, fatphobic, sexist, racist, ableist, the list goes on. Yes, I grasp that we are meant to dislike the antagonist, but making him possess every single abhorrent quality imaginable is just so very lazy. And it just feels gross to read, it isn't enjoyable, it's disgusting and it made me want to put it down multiple times.

And don't get me started on the pathetic boomer protagonist. Jesus, he is just the saddest white cop who ever lived. My violins couldn't get any smaller. We don't really know why he's a curmudgeon, he just is. He's not really very nice, or interesting. The fact that he is "a fat ex-cop" is repeated ad nauseum as though being fat is his only defining trait. Then there's his sidekick, a black teenager who INEXPLICABLY uses an old-timey slave affectation AS AN INSIDE JOKE. WITH AN ADULT WHITE MAN. What. And I can't stress this enough, the f*ck. And oh lord the techno-speak is like my mom trying to understand how her VCR works.

It's just not a very good detective story. It's not a whodunnit because you know whounnit the whole time. There's no mystery. Just an unlikeable grumpy vigilante making stupid decisions.

Content Warnings

lillyrose97's review

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

melodyseestrees's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

If there is one thing Mr. King excels at it is writing absolutely unlikable characters. Even characters that should be likeable largely have aspects that can make the reader dislike them. In some chapters this worked well and framed the event how each character saw them clearly. In other chapters the reader became enmeshed in a slog of diatribe that was a true chore to get through, even in the audiobook format.
If you are fond of Mr. King's other works and characters you will probably like this. If you are coming in expecting a typical thriller you will not enjoy this as much. For me, despite my casual familiarity with several of King's works I found it difficult to get up to the 40% mark in the book. To the story's credit the pace does pickup upon the changing of a key character or two somewhere around the 50% mark.

The pace picks up after the death of Janey.

Content Warnings

maddie7217's review

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

There were a lot of sections that contained slurs or used poor writing to make racial stratification the butt of a joke. It felt inappropriate at times given the author’s identity.

Content Warnings

zaraha's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Content Warnings

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Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

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