Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Rating: 3/5

Summary:

Hundreds of desperate unemployed people line up in the frigid pre-dawn hours of a troubled Midwestern city for a place at a work fair. A single driver in a stolen Mercedes plows into the crowd, driving over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. There are eight people killed and fifteen people injured. The assailant gets away.

Strengths:

Mr. Mercedes' pacing isn't going to win over the weekly audience, but if you stick with it, you'll find an interesting take on genre tropes filled with clever character drama and uniformly outstanding performances.

Weakness:

This book has completely saddened me. I had so many problems with it that I'm not sure if my incoherent ranting would even come close to capturing all of my annoyance and irritation.

My Opinion:

The tale begins with the typical suspense that King is known for. An early morning line for a work fair devolves into a bloodbath written in the King tradition. He has an incredible capacity to render his characters human and three-dimensional in a short period of time, which further adds to the horror of what is about to unfold.