Keith Miller

Nasty piece of work

Stephen King’s latest foray into hard-boiled detective fiction has a definite whiff of Elmore Leonard — without the humour

issue 06 June 2015

Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled detective fiction’. The new book is not so much hard-boiled as slowly poached, Heston Blumenthal style, in a sous-vide water oven, then finished on a violently hot grill.

King has the popular novelist’s gifts in spades — a flawless sense of pace, an ear for dialogue, an eye for the telling detail, a no-mess-no-fuss approach to characterisation. He also has special insights into the uncanny: his frequent forays into the supernatural are wrenchingly plausible, while his rendering of ‘ordinary’ things — a face, a doorway, the hollowed-out roots of a tree — is steeped in mystery and threat. What he doesn’t have — and it is impossible to say this without seeming supercilious, but it’s the honest truth — is much in the way of literary affect.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in