Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers is the second novel in what has become known as the Bill Hodges trilogy, preceded by Mr. Mercedes (2014) and followed by End of Watch (2016). Unlike the vast majority of King’s work, which focuses on horror, this trilogy focuses on crime and detective work. In Mr. Mercedes, Bill Hodges is a retired detective who becomes obsessed with an unsolved murderer known as the Mercedes Killer, who murdered 16 people when he drove a Mercedes into a group of people. He eventually teams up with Holly Gibney to find the murderer, Brady Hartsfield, who is in a coma at the conclusion of the novel. Holly appears throughout the trilogy as Hodges’s partner, as well as in the books The Outsider (2018), If It Bleeds (2020), and Holly (2023). Although Mr. Mercedes lacks the supernatural elements which have become typical of King’s works, the ending of Finders Keepers implies that something supernatural is at play as he uses his mind to turn the faucet on and off and flip over his mother’s picture. In End of Watch, King takes the trilogy fully into the supernatural, as Hartsfield—from his comatose state in the hospital—controls a video game that encourages suicidal ideation and behavior in teenagers.