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55 pages 1 hour read

Stephen King

Mr. Mercedes

Stephen KingFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014

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Further Reading & Resources

Further Reading: Fiction/Genre

King has written several hard-boiled detective novels, some of which are realistic and some that contain supernatural elements.

  • The Mr. Mercedes series (2015) King considers his first hard-boiled detective series. The supernatural element appears in the third book of the series, End of Watch.

  • The Outsider (2019), is less hard-boiled crime than it is a detective story, but it features Holly Gibney, one of the major characters from the Mr. Mercedes series.

  • Joyland (2014), Hard-Case Crime, contains minor elements of the supernatural. The author plays with some of the conventions of the genre but is for the most part typical of the hard-boiled genre. King turns the Joyland amusement park into a self-contained urban environment, and the focus is on human corruption rather than Evil on a grand scale.

Further Reading: Well-Known Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction

The hard-boiled detective story has retained its appeal since its emergence in the 1930s. The following is a list of some of the best-known examples:

  • The Maltese Falcon (1930) Dashiell Hammett—featuring Sam Spade, possibly the quintessential hard-boiled detective played in the movie by Humphrey Bogart. Hammett is considered one of the most influential crime writers of the 20th century.

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