Devouring Stephen King: End of Watch

I had quite a lot of feels reading this book, because for me it really sort of is the end of watch. My Stephen King journey ends here*, and whilst the great prolific writer is obviously still going, I still am having major Feelings about this being over (which I shall awe and amaze you with on the 21st, get excited). And so, the end of my watch was with End of Watch, and what a book it was.

So this is the third book in a trilogy and basically everything I have to say about it will be a spoiler. I think that in order to say anything at all, I think I'm going to have to tell you to turn away now if you haven't read these books, although I'm not going to say anything too outrageously revealing, I will essentially be giving away the end of Mr Mercedes, so. Yes.

End of Watch starts with Bill Hodges skipping out on a Doctor's appointment to get to the site of an apparent murder-suicide where everything looks a bit fishy. Of course, this being the trilogy that it is, the victims of the murder suicide are a woman who was left quadriplegic in the mercedes massacre of the first book, and her mother and carer. Everything about this seems fairly straightforward (I can't even begin to imagine the life of a quadriplegic, and especially the life of caring for someone who needs assistance with basically everything) except for the fact that their housekeeper says they were pretty happy with life, and Hodges and Holly find an outdated computer game device thing (yep, all of those words), also seen in the now vegetable-like Brady Hartsfield's hospital room.

As they begin to investigate, they notice a spate of suicides that all have links to Hartsfield, all of which seems impossible because, y'know, dude's been in hospital for YEARS, without proper brain function and all of those useful things. What's so great about this book is that all the little details you didn't really notice in the previous book when Hodges kept visiting Brady, all become super relevant and parts of the main story in this book. It not only follows the main action of the investigations, but also goes into the innermost workings of Brady's mind, and all that it's been through since we last had access to it in Mr Mercedes. It's still no pleasure to be in, but so many things are revealed and tied up, just like a good trilogy should do.

And this really is such a good trilogy. It's not something King has done a lot (and I would know!) and I like the fact that it has a lot of realism and just thriller-y elements that many of his other books lack. There are some supernatural elements of this last book, but even those are explained away by the characters using pseudo-science, and aren't really treated as unexplained. This leaves the way clear for good old fashioned thriller/detective work- chasing leads, working out what's going on, chasing down the criminal... It's all good, old fashioned fun, and I love it.

And I have loved this. I have loved reading these books, and not just this trilogy. I feel so weird knowing that I don't have this giant backlog of Stephen King books anymore, and knowing that I'm actually going to have to wait to read a new one, but it also feels pretty nice to have such an achievement under my belt. This trilogy though- I really can't recommend it enough, or really, you know, any Stephen King book apart from the bad ones (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). Go forth, my pretties, and read read read.



*I'm ignoring his co-authored book released this year because I can, unless I can sneak it in before 21st September (aka King's 70th Birthday) which I would be pretty proud of but I'm not sure it's going to happen and thus I shall read it as a regular citizen rather than one who is challenging herself