Mr. Mercedes Review

So... Mr. Mercedes ... My first Stephen King book. Although I won't say I was surprised, I was a little bit betrayed (in a sense) after a few chapters.


When I first looked up this book, it was classified as mystery. I was ready right off the bat for the usual mystery elements; the detective, the suspects, the closed room murders. Now, the book does contain some of these elements; the protagonist is (or was) a detective who was trying to chase down "Mr. Mercedes", and there is a "closed car" mystery involved. However, there are no suspects, because after a few chapters, we get see through the perspective of the psychopathic Mr. Mercedes himself.


When I realized that this wasn't a "who-dunnit" kind of book, and more of a thriller, I was a little disappointed. I've been reading several thrillers lately and I wanted to dive into the mystery novel more. Big deal, right? So what if it's a thriller instead of a mystery? They're very close to each other. That's like your friend telling you that they have tickets to a tennis game and then showing up and realizing that it's a badminton game instead. "Eh, they're pretty close, right?"


Not only did I not get the joy of trying to problem solve through this book, I also had the disgust of reading things that I really did not want to read because 1) they had nothing to do with the plot and never had any relevance later on and 2) just seemed to be like one of Scarecrow's toxin-induced hallucinations rather than something that would actually happen.


Yes, I understand that this is a Stephen King novel and I should've anticipated the horror element from the start. And trust me, I did. I just wasn't expecting sex scenes to be explained in pain-staking detail and causing me to not only have to skip sections but also throw up in my mouth.  Like I said earlier, these scenes had no relevance to anything else in the plot and instead distracted from the thriller / cat-and-mouse game that was occurring.


Don't get me wrong, I loved some of the descriptions, such as "Hodges has read there are wells in Iceland so deep you can drop a stone down them and never hear the splash. He thinks some human souls are like that". Descriptions like that are just pure poetry. And the scenes where Hodges is deducing what could've happened in the crime scene are brilliant. But by having the story also be from the perspective of the killer, the reader can't figure anything out; it's all given to us.


A lot of this book is about what I would expect from a Stephen King novel, but at the same time, it was like watching badminton; slow, quirky (not in a good way), and downright confusing.

Book Covers



Book covers have always been the first thing that makes me pick up a book. I prefer books with covers that tell a story on their own or contain a symbol or object within the story.

I love the cover for The Glass Castle , because it focuses on the girl in the image, with the rugged edges around her, almost like a photo cut out of another photo. The pose she's in also drew me in because it almost looks like she's telling a secret to someone, which makes you want to read the book in order to figure out who this girl is and what she has to say.

I don't like covers that have eyes on them. I don't know what it is, but the eyes have this deep, cutting feeling that distracts me from the book itself.

For In Cold Blood , I was spooked out the minute I saw the cover. I know that it has a very dark, cold theme, but it still freaked me out every time I took it out of my backpack. Cartoon eyes are fine, but when the eyes are real, it just makes the book that much more terrifying.

I have bought a book solely based on its cover, and it was Incarceron. It was a very confusing book that I have no desire to re-read, but the cover just drew me in with the metallic colors and the mysterious key.



The cool way the key is designed and how intricate the key and gears surrounding it are just pulled me in. The tagline at the bottom intrigued me as well. I wanted to know how it was possible for a prison to be alive and what the key had to do with it.

Although covers don't entirely make or break a book, it is annoying when the book is amazing, but the cover is awful, and vice versa. I think that equal effort should be put into both aspects so that the reader is given an accurate representation of what they're getting themselves into. 

Book #4 Intro

 For my fourth book, I've chosen Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. I chose this particular reward because it won an Edgar Award and I've never read a Stephen King book, so I thought I'd pick one that was more of a mystery novel than a horror novel. My expectations are that this book will have a mix of Stephen King's typical horror elements along with more a classic mystery feel to it that follows the guidelines of other mystery books. My thoughts on the cover are that the book revolves around a murder, which is what the book it about. Based on what I've read so far, it has a lot to do with the plot of the story and the agenda of "Mr. Mercedes". I hadn't heard anything about this book before I looked at the Edgar Award winners list. I know that Stephen King hasn't written many mystery novels, so I was interested in seeing how he writes mystery.


 Since I've been reading thrillers lately, I wanted to read a mystery so that I could really see the difference between the two genres. I also wanted something similar to what I've been reading, but not something in the exact same genre. I wanted to change up my selection a little bit by a reading a Stephen King book since I've never really considered reading his books before. Since I'm not a horror fan, I don't know if I'll like this book or not, but I'm hoping that it focuses more on the mystery of finding out who the killer is rather than focusing on the murder. I also wanted to read a modern mystery book rather than one that takes place in the past. I love detective novels, so I hope that this book gets me back into the genre.