Book review: Finders Keepers

With more than 50 novels under his belt, it’s admirable King still writes his own books, unlike some big authors whose names have been turned into brands.

Stephen King

Hodder & Stoughton, €20.99; ebook, €14.99

Mr Mercedes, published in 2013, was refreshing: devoid of supernatural spookiness, it was a cat-and-mouse suspense. Finders Keepers is its sequel, although it begins with new characters setting up a new plot.

Novelist John Rothstein is the crucial character, even though he dies in the first chapter: he lingers through his literary legacy, especially as his obsessed fan of a murderer steals a cache of unpublished notebooks.

King has lots to say on the nature of books and their bewitching power over people, a theme he probed best in Misery as introspective terror.

The last pages do hint at something supernatural to come in the next instalment and, unlike John Rothstein, it seems King is determined to publish everything he can write.

If books such as the exciting Finders Keepers are the result, we should be grateful.