Holly
by Stephen King, 2023, Scribner, 449pp. Available in ebook and audiobook formats.
Nearly any writer who has written fiction more than about ten pages in length has encountered what I call “character creep.” You start out with a “throwaway” character, a red-shirt whose only real purpose is to die in chapter three and alert the rest of your mob that there’s something dangerous out there. But then something in your unconscious hiccoughs, and the character says or does something that tickles your fancy, and you end up killing the surly chef instead and your throwaway goes on to become a major supporting personality. If you happen to be a meticulous plotter, this can really complicate your life. And of course, it’s a crap shoot: will you get a great character like Patrick Randle McMurphy, or Jar-Jar Binks?
It’s been said that Stephen King’s Holly Gibney was meant to be a throwaway character in King’s 2012 book, “Mister Mercedes.” She may even have been on the red-shirt list, since she started as a favorite King victim of evil: sweet, innocent, trusting, and obviously in harm’s way. But a vein in King’s hindbrain twitched, some endorphins were released, and Holly was blessed by King the merciful God. King has written more novels than most people have read, and I think even he was surprised.
Holly went on to become a resourceful and plot-turning character in that first book, and became protagonist Bill Hodges’ main supporting character in the next book. She had co-billing in the third book, replacing him entirely at the end. Since then she’s been in four more books, three as the central character.
The large and growing Mercedes/Holly series has established King as a major force in detective novels, but there’s a mistaken assumption that he writes mystery novels. He doesn’t. In Holly, as in all the other novels in that stream, the reader knows exactly who the murderer was by about the third chapter, who he killed, why he killed, how he killed, and often as not, who he intends to kill next. And realistically, we know Holly is going to prevail in the end. (If he writes enough Holly stories, he’ll eventually want a challenge and come up with an Irene Adler to outwit Holly.)
King writes you-know-exactly-who-dunnit novels. In Holly’s eponymous novel, it is no spoiler to reveal that the murderers are a pair of dotty old retired college professors, and they kill people to eat them. The real suspense (and there is lots of that) lies in how Holly starts to notice something is going on, what is going on, and who might be behind it. The professors, in turn, eventually notice that Holly is sniffing in their direction and start figuring out what to do about it. The climax is a satisfying King one, and includes a machine designed to turn Steve Buscemi into plot twists.
King has always excelled in characterization, and in the case of Holly, an insecure introvert with OCD to begin with, he has found a rich field of personality study, and Holly has become one of his deepest and most sophisticated characters, even more so than the novels where he Mary-Sues himself into becoming a beleaguered writer who gets a foot chopped off by a mad nurse or whatever.
There have been wails that King was “more political” in this novel. It’s no secret that King openly detests and disdains anti-vaxxers, Qanon loons, and the neo-fascist MAGAts and their sick leader. King writes books that are very much pop cultural events (Outside of The Tower series, it’s rare for a King novel to be set outside of contemporary America). He hasn’t changed, but the culture has. It’s nearly impossible over the past decade to discuss American society without addressing the Trump-driven divide, and even if his intent wasn’t to proselytize, he wouldn’t be able to faithfully capture the gestalt of America now without discussing the influence of the hard right. That the MAGAts are suffering fits of poutrage over Holly must make King very sad. I’m sure he hasn’t slept in weeks.
Heh, heh.