The New York Times - Janet Maslin
While [Finders Keepers] doesn't have the high drama of [Mr. Mercedes] or the fireworks that, most likely, will cap off the stories of these characters, it has greater depth and time for reflection. And it considers one of Mr. King's favorite subjects: the dynamic between famous authors and their fans…One of the pleasures of Finders Keepers is watching Mr. King's ways of making pages turn.
The New York Times Book Review - Laura Lippman
…King is a natural raconteur, confident of his readers' interest…[Finders Keepers] is a classic race-against-time story, one that benefits from King's superb patience and pacing.
Seattle Times
No one can create a villain quite like King. . . . [A]ll the elements come together in a very public, potentially explosive finale (with a surprising post script). King fans may find themselves furiously turning pages long into the night.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A fast-paced cat-and-mouse game between Hodges, the motley group of unlikely heroes that he assembles, and the Mercedes Killer.
Booklist
The most straight-up mystery-thriller of [King’s] career…Pretty darn fresh.
Kirkus
Nicely dark, never predictable and altogether entertaining.
|Los Angeles Times
A showdown between good and evil that characterizes the best of King's work, regardless of genre.
Library Journal
King’s many, many fans will want this, especially those who enjoyed 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.
The New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
Tampa Bay Times
King may have left out the supernatural in Mr. Mercedes, but his gifts for creating thoroughly believable characters and thrumming suspense are in full play. He keeps raising the stakes and ratcheting up the violence, and just when you think everything is settled there's one spine-icing little turn on the very last page.
Boston Herald
Hartfield is sensitive, sympathetic and one of King’s most realistic characters. He is a lot like Norman Bates from Psycho, in the worst ways imaginable.You can add Hartfield to the list of great King villains, alongside the shape-shifting monster Pennywise from It and the hypnotic vampire Kurt Barlow from Salem’s Lot.
New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
The Washington Post Elizabeth Hand
Praise for Finders Keepers
“Stephen King’s superb new stay-up-all-night thriller, Finders Keepers, is a sly,often poignant tale of literary obsession that recalls the themes of his classic 1987 novel Misery…a love letter to the joys of reading and to American literature… wonderful, scary, moving.
Miami Herald
"A taut, calibrated thriller . . . The majority of the book is merciless and unforgiving, and the scariest thing about it is how plausible the whole scenario is."
People Magazine
A trimmer-than-usual King, but that doesn't mean he skimps on the suspense and spine-tingling chills.
Associated Press
Praise for Mr. Mercedes
"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."
USA Today
"The new book is so good, being at least mildly obsessed with it is understandable. The finest thing about it, however, is that the author has another story to tell before the finale of this excellent series.
Kirkus Reviews
Nicely dark, never predictable and altogether entertaining.
starred review Kirkus Reviews
As in Misery and TheShining, King swan dives into the looniness lurking at both ends of thewriter-reader transaction…the narrative hums and roars along like ahigh-performance vehicle…a rip-snortingentertainment; one that also works as a sneaky-smart satire of literarycriticism and how even the most attentive readers can often miss the wholepoint.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
An oh-so-dark mystery that never shuts the door on love, loss and, possibly, redemption.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
King creates such vivid characters—people you can picture yourself drinking a beer with or inviting over for lunch. So when he puts them in great peril, and that includes Jerome’s family and pet dog and the Mercedes’ owner’s family, it’s a race against time . . .
Christian Science Monitor
Think of Mr. Mercedes as an AC/DC song: uncluttered, chugging with momentum, and a lot harder to pull off than it looks. . . . King has written a hot rod of a novel,perfect for a few summer days at the pool. Mercedes-Benz commands drivers to demand ‘the best or nothing.’ In pop-fiction terms, that motto still applies to Stephen King, too. With apologies to AC/DC, the highway to hell never felt so fun.
Publishers Weekly
[A] taut thriller about the thin line separating fandom from fanaticism…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.
Publisher's Weekly
King excels in his disturbing portrait of Brady, a genuine monster in ordinary human form who gives new meaning to the phrase‘the banality of evil.
Washington Post
"On one level, Mr. Mercedes is an expertly crafted example of the classic race-against-the-clock thriller. On another, it is a novel of depth and character enriched throughout by the grace notes King provides in such seemingly effortless profusion. It is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses."
People Magazine
A trimmer-than-usual King, but that doesn't mean he skimps on the suspense and spine-tingling chills.
Booklist
The most straight-up mystery-thriller of [King’s] career…Pretty darn fresh.
The New York Times
A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.
USA Today
"The new book is so good, being at least mildly obsessed with it is understandable. The finest thing about it, however, is that the author has another story to tell before the finale of this excellent series.
Associated Press Staff
Praise for Mr. Mercedes
"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."
Los Angeles Times
A showdown between good and evil that characterizes the best of King's work, regardless of genre.
Washington Post
"On one level, Mr. Mercedes is an expertly crafted example of the classic race-against-the-clock thriller. On another, it is a novel of depth and character enriched throughout by the grace notes King provides in such seemingly effortless profusion. It is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses."
Miami Herald
"A taut, calibrated thriller . . . The majority of the book is merciless and unforgiving, and the scariest thing about it is how plausible the whole scenario is."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-04-02
There 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 prison 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.
