In “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler wrote: “In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.” He’s making the case for his Philip Marlowe, honorable and true, his “shopworn Galahad.” But nobility for nobility’s sake doesn’t interest Stephen King. In the end, with his characters facing the unbearable possibility of a second, far worse act of senseless violence, King locates his “quality of redemption” in a woman with “graying hair and the face of a neurotic teenager” — and in the makeshift family that has formed between Hodges, Jerome and Holly herself. No one man or woman, King suggests, can forestall every act of senseless violence or protect us from random catastrophe. But what “Mr. Mercedes” offers instead are bighearted men and women who are, after all, much like us. And, King seems to be reminding readers, the good guys still outnumber the bad. -- The New York Times
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 11:43:35 +0000
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