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Washington Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Book Review: Quirky private eye tracks a couple more killers in Stephen King's 'Never Flinch'
Stephen King's favorite private investigator returns in 'Never Flinch,' the sixth novel by King featuring Holly Gibney, who readers first met in the Bill Hodges trilogy ('Mr. Mercedes,' 'Finders Keepers,' 'End of Watch') and who then helped solved the murders at the heart of 'The Outsider' and 'Holly.' In 'Never Flinch,' Holly cracks two more cases, one as the lead security escort for a polarizing author touring the nation to talk about women's reproductive freedom, and the other back home in Ohio, as a serial killer preys on jurors following a miscarriage of justice.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Quirky private eye tracks a couple more killers in Stephen King's 'Never Flinch'
Stephen King's favorite private investigator returns in 'Never Flinch,' the sixth novel by King featuring Holly Gibney, who readers first met in the Bill Hodges trilogy ('Mr. Mercedes,' 'Finders Keepers,' 'End of Watch') and who then helped solved the murders at the heart of 'The Outsider' and 'Holly.' In 'Never Flinch,' Holly cracks two more cases, one as the lead security escort for a polarizing author touring the nation to talk about women's reproductive freedom, and the other back home in Ohio, as a serial killer preys on jurors following a miscarriage of justice. The biggest connection between the two cases is classic King — the killers have dead Daddy issues. We meet them both relatively early in the plot and spend time inside their heads, though the true identity of one of them is a mystery until closer to the end. One of the murderers supplies the novel's title, recalling how his abusive and overbearing father berated him to 'push through to the bitter end. No flinching, no turning away.' Even with two killers talking to themselves, Holly is still the star of the book. She continues to 'attract weirdos the way a magnet attracts iron filings,' is how Holly's friend Barbara puts it. More often than not, Holly's obsessive compulsive disorder helps her 'think around corners,' as one of the story's detectives says. King also brings back Barbara's brother, Jerome, and introduces some dynamic new characters, including Sista Bessie ('She's not the Beatles, but she's a big deal'), a soul singer whose comeback concert serves as the nexus for the convergence of the novel's two storylines. When they do, readers will enjoy the very Kingly ending. It's not quite the pigs' blood from 'Carrie,' but it's satisfying. The pages turn very quickly in the final third of the book as all the characters arrive back in Dayton, Ohio ('the second mistake on the lake'), where we first met Holly, and where psychopath Brady Hartsfield began his killing spree in 'Mr. Mercedes.' Will the Mingo Auditorium be the site of another massacre or will Holly and her amateur detectives save the day again? ___ AP book reviews:
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A New Stephen King Novel Asks, Does the World Have Heroes Anymore?
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.
Evening Standard
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Never Flinch book review: Stephen King tries plotting and comes out plodding
So, the plot. In the fictional city of Buckeye, Ohio, a serial killer seeks to avenge the death of a man wrongly imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. His perverse form of justice means killing 14 random people, '13 innocents and one guilty'. The case comes to the attention of Holly Gibney, a private investigator whom King fans first met 11 years ago in the Mr Mercedes trilogy. Holly helps the police while at the same time working as a bodyguard for a feminist activist, whose pro-choice rallies attract the righteous wrath of an extremist church that's on the FBI's radar as a terrorist threat. The serial killer's spree and the church's violent campaign against the activist finally converge into an action-packed climax that plays out hour by hour, then minute by minute.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Serial thriller from the king of storytellers; NEVER FLINCH by Stephen King, THE RETIREMENT PLAN by Sue Hincenbergs, DEAD WATER by Simon Toyne
Never Flinch is available now from the Mail Bookshop NEVER FLINCH by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton £25, 432pp) THE founder of the Finders Keepers detective agency, Holly Gibney – one of King's most memorable characters in recent years – returns to help her friend, detective Izzy Jaynes, track down a serial killer who has threatened to 'kill 13 innocents and one guilty' to avenge the death of an innocent man, who was killed in jail after he had been wrongly convicted of murder. But then Holly is diverted to act as bodyguard for women's rights advocate Kate McKay who is embarking on a nationwide tour of the US, but who is being stalked and threatened by a ruthless vigilante. The master storyteller has lost none of his grasp of the dark heart in the soul of Middle America: the result is simply superb. The Retirement Plan is available now from the Mail Bookshop THE RETIREMENT PLAN by Sue Hincenbergs (Sphere £16.99, 336pp) THREE suburban American housewives of a certain age decide they have had enough of their humdrum lives and husbands who do not seem to care about them. They want to match their friend, whose world changed when her husband was found dead. She took off for a new life in Florida with the insurance money. So they come up with a plan to kill their husbands to enable their new lives. What they don't know is that their husbands have a secret scheme of their own – to steal $10million from a local casino. A wonderful cosy crime novel with a sharp edge. Ingenious, twisty and often hilarious – with a neat ending – this debut from a former TV producer is certainly a match for Richard Osman 's The Thursday Murder Club. DEAD WATER by Simon Toyne (Hemlock Press £16.99, 384pp) A CORPSE is washed up on the banks of the Thames near Tower Bridge with no head and no hands, simply an address mysteriously tattooed on one arm. DCI Tannahill Khan realises the killer wanted the body found, and the tattoo is the reason. It is the address of Khan's friend and collaborator, forensic criminologist Dr Laughton Rees. So begins the third of Toyne's excellent series involving the two detectives. It transpires that Rees is living in the flat once owned by her late father, Met detective John Rees, who was responsible for the conviction of a brutal band of robbers 16 years ago – and one of the gang is set on revenge for his years in prison. Written with Toyne's practiced flair for suspense, the story is as fast flowing and threatening as the Thames itself
