A New Stephen King Novel Asks, Does the World Have Heroes Anymore?

New York Times

6 days ago

When I received what appeared to be an email from a New York Times editor asking whether I was interested in reviewing the new Stephen King novel, it crossed my mind that it was a phishing scam. That Stephen King? Right, fella.
I verified the sender, double-checked the email address, pasted an included link into a browser instead of clicking on it directly (nice try, scammer). Several Google searches and redundant confirmations later, I cautiously agreed to take on the assignment, still certain the book would never show up as promised.
When it did, I signed for it wondering: Had I been silly to be so suspicious? Or duly vigilant? As it turned out, 'Never Flinch,' Stephen King's propulsive follow-up to his 2023 thriller 'Holly,' courts a similar question: Is the world totally fine, or is it, in fact, on fire?
In the early pages of the novel, the brilliant but troubled private investigator Holly Gibney, who appears in six of King's previous books, is just trying to enjoy some fish tacos with another familiar face, Detective Izzy Jaynes. Holly and Izzy are pals — a refreshing and distinctly feminine inversion of the usual animosity depicted between P.I.s and law enforcement — and Izzy needs help with a case.
Someone has emailed the Buckeye City Police Department pledging to murder '13 innocents and 1 guilty' to avenge a wrongly convicted man who was killed in prison. 'Does that make sense to you?' the message reads. 'It does to me, and that is enough.' Well, it may not make much sense, but the sentiment — this insistence that the invention of truth is an inalienable right — sounds painfully familiar, and it's not just the aspiring serial killers in our lives who are expressing it either.
Before long, the mysterious emailer, who, like Holly, is plagued by the intrusive narrative of an abusive dead parent, starts making good on the threats. The murders are swift. Unceremonious. Random. Executed with a chilling detachment that alerts you to your own infernal vulnerability.
Even though bodies are piling up, the police chief has 'requested — no, mandated' that Izzy make time to promote and practice for the forthcoming charity baseball game against the Fire Department. 'A dog and pony show,' as she puts it, prioritizing P.R. over catching bad guys.
Holly sees something of a dog and pony show in a new client, the provocative women's rights activist Kate McKay. After several violent public incidents involving a Westboro Baptist Church-style stalker, and another dust-up with problematic optics (the celebrity feminist's male bodyguard beat up a female fan), Kate needs a new bodyguard for the last few stops of her sold-out book tour. Despite having no experience in guarding bodies and at first sight looking 'almost … frail,' Holly, Kate insists, is the right woman for the job. 'Woman being the main requirement,' Holly grumbles.
King returns often to this chasm between wanting to do the right thing and wanting to appear to be doing the right thing, or virtue signaling, as it's known online, where the scourge runs rampant. This overarching social critique works well to draw so many initially disparate threads together over the course of the novel, with short scenes bouncing among characters and locales. A structure that feels fun, almost retro. I kept wanting Kathryn Bigelow's 'Blue Steel'-era sleaze to characterize the inevitable adaptation.
However, in 2025, Kate McKay's Betty Friedan act feels a bit too out of step with time. How I wish a powerful feminist voice were filling arenas across the country, as Kate does. How I wish she were on the covers of magazines or had '12 million followers on Twitter.' Instead, she's probably screaming into the void with the rest of us, watching in terror as the United States government systematically dismantles so much of what the real Friedan fought for.
And maybe that's King's point. The world doesn't have heroes anymore. We're too busy with our own performances, hunting for skeletons in our would-be heroes' closets in order to look the most informed. Kate is a sobering reminder that our Big Pictures, our most ambitious ideals, have become fractured, weakened, divided across billions of small screens, where indifferent algorithms dispense unwholesome rewards to content that sows discord instead of truth.
In the cinematic style we crave from a Stephen King novel, 'Never Flinch' calls attention to the very real dangers of turning your convictions into accessories, exsanguinated by the impulse to broadcast them; of standing for nothing but your own image, satisfied by only appearing to have done the right thing. Thoughts and prayers alone won't fix our problems; they might even obscure how little meaningful action is being taken to fix them.
The question remains: Is the world totally fine? Or is it, in fact, on fire?
Seems like that's our new right to choose.