Bill Hodges Trilogy: A Review

The following piece may contain spoilers of one of Stephen King’s books. Viewer discretion is advised.

In early June, Stephen King (also known as the “Master of Horror” because almost all his books are about horror, suspense, and thriller) put a finish line to the Bill Hodges Trilogy with the release of the third and last book: End of Watch, which followed Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. All three books were enjoyable, you’ll never get bored while reading it.

Mr. Mercedes was published on June 3, 2014. The book will mark the beginning of an exciting journey. Mr. Mercedes focuses on the crime that Brady Hartsfield committed at a job fair with a Mercedes Benz and Hartsfield’s maddening family. Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson, and Holly Gibneys (The Mercedes Benz’s owner’s cousin) try to figure out Brady’s next moves to avoid another catastrophe.

The second book, Finders Keepers, which was published on June 2, 2015, is about a separate case that the Finders Keepers organization (run by Hodges and Holly) try to solve with a little bit of help from Jerome. The case makes a connection between a murder of a famous author in 1978 to the present (2010 in the book).

At the end of this book, Hartsfield seems to be brain dead, but this doesn’t means he’s done chasing Hodges. End of Watch, published on June 7, 2016, talks about the last plan of Hartsfield (now also referred as The Suicide Prince, which was the original name of the last book) to kill people by suicide through a technological device, which has a lot of games including one that has an illusion. As always, the Finder Keepers crew try to figure out what’s up with him and stop him before he does his thing again.

I really loved the series and it was a great pleasure reading it. Even though the books are fiction, I liked King’s use of realistic stuff like the guns used by Mr. Hodges, or the places the characters were (at least they sound real). The suspense was another trait I enjoyed. In a book, you need to carefully read word by word so you don’t miss anything that will happen later on, and while reading the series, the suspense will kill you! As soon as you know something intriguing, you would want to skim the pages and see what happens at the end, but you can’t do that! You’ll skip so many details while you skim, for example what are the attacks they used to stop Hartsfield? Or who is being affected by one of Hartsfield’s plans and what does he has to do with any of the characters?

Bill Hodges Trilogy is a really good horror, and suspense series. I would like to get a lot of people into it, so I can share reactions and emotions with them!