A killer curveball

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

Our favourite diminutive gray-haired autistic private eye Holly Gibney faces not one, not two, but three totally whackjob wingnut killers converging on dreary Buckeye City on the even drearier shores of Lake Erie.
Having sold plenty of copies of his most recent novel Holly, American horror master Stephen King brings Gibney back again, this time tackling an unknown avenger seemingly killing people randomly, and siblings from a far-right church aiming to assassinate a feminist icon.
Well, as Holly might say, this is kind of poopy, but no more than she can handle. Probably. Maybe.
Shane Leonard photo
After supporting roles in some of his other books, Never Flinch is Stephen King's second novel to feature Holly Gibney as the protagonist.
Never Flinch is quite the episodic tale, offering us disparate elements galore, which we're confident will all come together in an apocalyptic finale.
One hint: no supernatural creatures this time… just evil on steroids.
To set the scene: A man who was beaten out for a big promotion frames his competitor as a child pornographer who goes to prison and is murdered by another inmate. The elevated runner-up doesn't get to enjoy his new job very long; he has terminal cancer and relents, although the innocent man is dead by then.
Except… except that there's evidence he recanted in time to save the wrongfully convicted man, but the prosecutor sat on the evidence because he had a slam-dunk conviction.
Now someone has announced he'll kill 13 innocents and one guilty in retribution. And proceeds to start doing so.
Meanwhile, feminist motivational author Kate is on a speaking tour across the U.S., attracting hordes of supporters and MAGA haters. King quietly works in the names of real doctors murdered for providing abortion as a health care service.
Unbeknownst to Kate and faithful assistant Corrie, a right-wing church has dispatched siblings Chris and Chrissy to try to scare her off the campaign, and if that doesn't work, to murder her and as many of her followers as they can manage.
In Buckeye City, it goes without saying.
The plot needs even more thickening — so Holly becomes Kate's bodyguard.
Meanwhile, legendary soul singer Sista Betty is going to be performing in Buckeye City, and is a huge admirer of Holly's young associate, poet Barbara, and wants to adapt one of her poems to music and perform it together. Yes, together.
Barbara and her brother Jerome are tangentially helping Holly unofficially sleuthing the growing list of random murders, after Holly is off-the-books enlisted by her friend police detective Izzy.
Never Flinch
Meanwhile (yet again), Izzy is starting pitcher for the cops in a charity softball game against the firefighters, that the mayor has decreed must go on, serial carnage notwithstanding. Further muddying the picture, the firefighters are depicted as a pack of MAGA misogynists.
Stephen King has written dozens of horror novels since Carrie in 1976, only a handful limited to human beings, and a paucity of straightforward murder mysteries, an obvious exception Holly the book, albeit with elderly professorial cannibals.
Never Flinch does get quite busy, the softball game especially cumbersome. In a desperate attempt to avoid spoilers: some characters are dealt with quite abruptly, when we might expect drawn-out confrontations lasting the better part of a chapter.
King has generally had well-meaning white liberals from the northern U.S. as his protagonists, for which Holly certainly qualifies.
He has had less success writing Black characters who feel like rounded real people. Barbara, Jerome and Sista Betty are just so nice, and so magnificently talented in everything they do. They feel like folk in a '50s sitcom about perfect families.
Nevertheless, Holly Gibney is an appealing hero with legions of fans. In the acknowledgements, King says his wife Tabitha read a draft and told him he could have done better.
Maybe so, but it's Stephen King, and Never Flinch offers a darned good read.
Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin has no intention of visiting Erie or Sandusky or whichever awful Ohio city that Buckeye City is supposed to be; he reckons random murders might not have been one of the featured tourism draws.