You don’t write more than 70 novels without knowing how to follow your muse, and the muse that Stephen King is following is called Holly Gibney.
She has now featured in seven novels or novellas for King, and she takes centre stage here again. Since we met her first 11 years ago as a mousy, repressed character in Mr Mercedes, Holly has found her confidence and blossomed into a smart and resourceful private detective.
This story kicks off when the Buckeye City police department receives a letter from someone threatening to kill “thirteen innocents and one guilty” in an act of atonement for the death of an innocent man. Holly is initially drawn into the investigation when the murders start, but then finds herself on the road acting as security for a controversial women’s rights activist who is bringing her pro-choice rally from city to city, and has attracted the attention of a stalker with murderous intent.
[ How Stephen King unlocks our imagination with every scareOpens in new window ]
This is King in crime thriller mode, although elements of supernatural horror do occasionally push their way into Holly stories, where they seem ill at ease. The evil that Holly is chasing in Never Flinch is strictly flesh and blood, yet oddly the story feels less plausible than many of King’s flights of fancy.
READ MORE
The idea that a shrinking violet such as Holly would take on a job as a bodyguard is utterly nonsensical – the character is far too smart and self-aware to put herself in that position – and is one of several elements that feel like parts from a different jigsaw. King takes aim at anti-abortion protests, queries the legal system, and there is a character that may or may not be trans, but is definitely problematic.
It’s a shame, as there are sections in here that work perfectly – the stalker gradually closing in on his prey could easily have been its own separate story, there are some heart-breaking father-son dynamics, and the murders in the serial killer story are genuinely chilling for how utterly senseless they are.
King is simply too good at this not to make it a page turner but ultimately the whole novel seems to add up to slightly less than the sum of its parts.
