The One Who Got Away

I'm not normally a fan of King's non-horror work, but I wanted to have an introduction to Holly Gibney before venturing into The Outside, and since she was introduced in the Bill Hodges trilogy, I figured I'd give it a go.

Mr. Mercedes is basically the story of a retired detective who comes out of retirement to pursue the one who got away -- The Mercedes Killer -- after being goaded to commit suicide by the killer.

The book starts off strong, with the Mercedes Killer driving a stolen Mercedes to drive it into a job fair, killing 8 and wounding so many others. Then we jump to retired detective Bill Hodges sitting in his living room toying with the idea of swallowing a bullet when a letter comes through the mail slot, a letter that more or less tells him to go ahead and do it. Which means the killer has been watching him. Instead of pushing Hodges over the edge, it invigorates him, and before you know it, he's back on the case again, even if unofficially.

The novel moves along at a swift pace, well, for at least half the book, and then I have to admit, King kinda lost me, and I was tempted to put the book aside. It was a real eye-roll moment for me, and that was when Janey seduces Bill. It was so out of the blue, but so contrived. You can't even call it spontaneous, and you just sit there in dumb disbelief and ask yourself, "Really?" After that, I more or less lost interest in the book, but then I had to remind myself why I started this one in the first place, and that was to meet Holly, and I still hadn't done that yet. So I pushed on, but from this point on, the story never got back on track for me. It just kept moving further and further into the unrealistic. Hodges knows there's a point where he should hand everything over to the police, but stubborn pride doesn't let him. This HAS to be his collar, and it doesn't matter who gets hurt in the process. Not even the death of his "girlfriend" is enough to make him turn it over to the police. He continues his investigation, putting the lives of a teenager and a middle-aged, emotionally challenged woman at risk. It's at this point I found myself turning against Hodges, which I'm sure wasn't King's intention, and found myself rooting for the crazy killer. You WANT Hodges to get his comeuppance, but sadly, it never happens. It all builds up to a totally unrealistic ending in a packed concert hall.

Would I recommend Mr. Mercedes? If you're a die-hard King fan, of course, but if you're one who has been disappointed with his later works, or one who, like me, finds him hit-or-miss (mostly miss, especially in his later books), I'd recommend approaching with caution; the first half worked for me, the second half didn't. Now I have to decide if I want to follow up with the second book in the trilogy.

It Sure as Hell Ain't Meg

There are times when I binge read a certain category of books. Coming off of Jaws, Meg, and The Trench, I was still in the mood for something dealing with sharks, but I wasn't ready to dive into Meg: Primal Waters just yet, so I tooled around on Amazon for a bit and discovered Rick Chesler's Hotel Megalodon. Story sounded interesting, so I picked it up.

I have to admit, the book had potential, and in the hands of Peter Benchley or Steve Alten, I think we would have had a hit on our hands. The story is simple: the development and building of a "luxury" underwater hotel disturbs a megalodon, that then proceeds to launch its attack on the hotel on opening weekend, methodically cutting off any means of escape for the guests and staff. The focus of the book, besides the shark attacks, is trying to get the guests safely out of the hotel and back on land. Sounds thrilling, right? Yawn. Wrong.

The problem we have here is the author not having a firm grasp on his subject matter. And if he does, something got lost in the translation as he put words to page because it doesn't come across. The setting is supposed to be a luxurious underwater hotel, but you don't get the feeling that the place is that luxurious. A kid in the book describe it best: it's like a Habitrail for humans. For those unfamiliar with Habitrails, it was a plastic prison for hamsters, gerbils, and mice. It was made up of a central "living area" with

tubes that led to other smaller compartments. And that's exactly what the hotel feels like, nothing luxurious about it. AND it's opening weekend and the guest list is all A Listers, so they need to impress. And make an impression they do. In the fact that nothing, and I mean nothing, has been tested for functionality, so you know when they attempt to activate something, it's going to fail. Of course. Like the escape pods -- that sink.

The other problem is the characters. You really don't come to care for any of them. The "hero" of the story is a young marine biologist, described as being in her mid twenties, but when you first meet her, she comes across as a fifteen or sixteen year old during a Bring Your Daughter to Work day. She's obviously out of her league here, so you hope she becomes shark chow soon so they can bring in the real star. James White, the man running the whole show and the resident villain, is so inept at his job, you have to wonder who he slept with to get the job. Maybe Mick, the supposed love interest, who breaks the heroine's heart when she walks in and finds him in a compromising position with the dolphin lady -- Carrie, Clarrie, Clarice, whatever the hell her name is. She's not important.

You also get the impression that the only knowledge the author has of marine equipment and sharks has been garnered from reading Steve Alten's books and Jaws, or maybe from an Atari 2600 simulation. When Coco is piloting the sub, it just doesn't seem real. And the megalodon? There were times I felt like I was watching SyFy's Supershark, especially when the shark was breaking windows and attempting to swim into the hotel to get at the guests. It would get itself wedged into a place, then swim backwards to free itself (sharks mobility is limited to forward motion), and often it seemed like the author lost track of his shark. In one scene, he says it slipped from window, and the body was more or less acting like a plug because suddenly the water was pouring in, but then the shark is back to snapping at Coco. Uh, didn't it just extract itself from the window to allow the water to flood the hotel? And every so often the author would throw out terms from out of the blue just to make it sound like he knew what he was talking about. And all you could do was chuckle.

And the ending?!?! OMG, I wanted to throw the book across the room . If I hadn't been reading a digital copy, I probably would have, but I didn't want to damage my Kindle. It was probably the worst part of the book. It's literally like giving a kitten a boop on the nose and telling it to be good.

Sadly, though, the author doesn't pursue what could probably have been one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and that's the old tribesmen that appear at the beginning and the end. You get the feeling that the megalodon is kind of a guardian spirit that rises up to protect the islanders and their way of life, almost like Godzilla defending Japan, but that aspect is never explored.

Overall, this book was a major fail for me, and if you are in the market for a big fish story, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.