Finders Keepers by Stephen King – An Audio Book Review

Blurb:

Shortlisted for the Audio Publisher’s Association Audie Award 2016 for Best Male Narrator.

1978: Meet Morris Bellamy, the man who robs the safe of America’s most famous reclusive writer, John Rothstein. But it isn’t just the money he is interested in. Morrie is obsessed with the author’s notebooks and is prepared to kill the author for them.

2009: Meet young Pete Saubers, whose father was knocked down by an out-of-control Mercedes in a job line-up. When he discovers a buried trunk of money and notebooks of a famous writer, he has the means to rescue his family from poverty. If he can keep it secret.

2013: Morrie is up for parole. And he’s hell-bent on recovering the notebooks.

That’s when retired detective Bill Hodges – who has set up a company called Finders Keepers – discovers the scheme.

Finders Keepers is spectacular suspense. It is also King writing about how literature shapes a life – for good, for bad, for ever.
Author: Stephen King
Narrator: Will Patton

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Series: Bill Hodges Trilogy #2
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Audio Release Date: 02/06/2015
Running Time: 13 hrs 3 mins
My Rating of ‘Finders Keepers’:
Purchase: Audible UK, Audible US, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Review:

I find that Stephen King tends to be very hit and miss. In the case of this book, and the 1st in the series (Mr. Mercedes) he is well and truly a hit.

Finders Keepers starts in much the same way that Mr. Mercedes does: with hundreds of hopefuls standing in line outside of a job fair.

Whereas the first book follows Bill Hodges on his quest to apprehend the Mercedes Killer, Finders Keepers follows the family of one of the victims and the trouble Pete Saubers puts his family in when he finds a chest buried behind his house filled with money and the unpublished works of John Rothstein.

The novel follows much the same formula as the previous book (Bill Hodges and co try to stop a deadly criminal without the aid of the police). Much like the first book, Hodges finds himself helping the kid of said family.

King added a bit more psychotic depth rather than sexual depth to his antagonist with Morris Bellamy and, as good a villain as Brady Hartsfield was, I think I like the savage unpredictability of Morris Bellamy just a little bit more. You feel like you’re really in Bellamy’s head and still find yourself unsure as to what he’d view as acceptable behaviour.

Although the adrenaline doesn’t start pumping until very late on, King’s seemingly effortless world and character building take centre stage and keep the story engrossing from the very first until the very last. That being said, the pacing is by no means slow. Everything until the real fast-paced action parts are stunningly superb.

I feel the final book in the trilogy (End of Watch) was set up in such a way that it’s made me want to get on to it sooner rather than later. I’m not even finished the trilogy and I already a little unhappy that it is only three books long.

My only real complaint in an otherwise flawless narration was that there was no clear narrative voice. If we had a section from Bill’s perspective, it was done in Bill’s voice. If we had a section in Holly’s POV (a frustrating start-stop kind of voice) then it was read in her voice. It wasn’t a huge drawback, but I’ve just always preferred a main narrative voice and then voices for speech. Didn’t harm my enjoyment, it just bugged me a little.