SERIAL CANNIBAL ACADEMICS

STEPHEN KING — HOLLY — 2023

This is the direct sequel of the famous Bill Hodges Trilogy that counts three novels, 1. Mr. Mercedes (2014), 2. Finders Keepers (2015), 3. End of Watch (2016). But we all know Bill Hodges is dead and that he had willed the business, Finders Keepers, to his “secretary become partner” Holly Gibney, but seven years have not elapsed in the story. In fact, hardly one year probably if we see what Jerome and Barbara Robinson have become in “seven” years. But some time has gone by, nevertheless. But I suggest concentrating our attention on the plot of this “detective” monstrous story.

First of all, we have to say that Stephen King tells us from the very start who the criminals are because he is trying to explore the psyche of these two criminals who are so different from what we would expect from a couple of post-80-year-old university professors, one in biology and nutritional science, the other one, his wife, in literature, meaning apparently only English literature. To state that beyond 80 years of age you cannot be a serial killer is totally absurd. There is no age for serial killers, and no age limit or mandatory retirement age for serial killers. The physical weakness is often easy to compensate with intelligence, planning, and “culture,” I mean the cultivation of the knowledge and the science of crime. It is true banks do not lend money to people beyond 80, at least in France they don’t, except if the old people have someone behind them who is going to guarantee the loan, plus good insurance in case of early death. But 80 is no longer the hell some people have thought and still think it is. But that hell is quite in phase with what society thinks, and in this book, Stephen King is trying by all means to describe society the way it is, and I must say our society is not what it could be. Either it has gone back to infantile psychology and behavior. Or it has become senile before all logical time. Look at a terrorist organization attacking in the middle of the night a rave party of many hundred people in the middle of a desert and killing them all except one hundred or so they take prisoners and hostages. Senile thinking in an infantile whimsical mind. True enough the hybridization of the two is pretty dangerous.