Finders Keepers Journal #3: Spoilers and Whining

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I finished Finders Keepers the other night.  Obviously --

there are spoilers ahead.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about the book.  There is also a lot of whining ahead.  Not because I didn't like the book; I liked it every much.  The whining is just that, me thinking and rethinking things perhaps beyond necessity.  Feel free to comment and tell me I've lost my mind -- or that I sound like a sulking child.

1. Surprises.  I'll admit: King got me.  I thought mama bear was dead.  Then it turns out to be -- A SCALP WOUND?  Okay, Mr. King, you're directing this movie and I'll go with it -- but I'm getting doubtful.

2. Hodges.  Did he need to be in this book?  Of course, he's needed to save Peter, so his presence is important if you're Pete.  But I'm not sure that other than the final scenes, Hodges and company really did anything to advance the plot.  There was a lot of running around, and a lot of talking -- but when it really got down to it, they were stuck in traffic and only showed up at the last minute to serve as Pete's trap door of escape.

For a hard boiled crime book, may I ask -- did Hodges do any mystery solving this time?

I think I enjoyed the story more when it was focused on Pete and Morris.  That was a great story line!  A crook hides his loot, and a boy finds it.  The boy uses the loot to pay his parents bills.

Would a real teenage boy be able to pull off half of what Peter does in the novel?

3. Misery.  Finders Keepers reminds me of Misery.  It's a novel about books -- and writing.  While Misery was a very closed novel -- just two people -- Finders Keepers happens on a much bigger stage.  Remember Paul Sheldon jamming his burning novel into Annie's mouth?  Remind you of the end of Finders Keepers?

4. Frustrating.  The final plot twists between Morris and Peter are frustrating.  First, the entire thing seems illogical.  So Peter's plan is to stave off Morris by holding a lighter over the precious manuscripts?  As soon as the book took this turn, I was going, "Wait. . . what?!"  The scene plays out not the way I really think it might have, but the way King wants it to.  His direction feels heavy handed in the final scenes.  He's forcing the plot along, making it work because he wants it to work out for Pete.

Why would Pete burn the only existing Rothstein manuscripts?  Obviously the answer is that it was the only way to get himself out of the mess he was in.  But it really did make for a ridiculous scene as he held a lighter over the notebooks and Morris held a gun on him.  I was thinking, "Is this seriously a stand off?  Morris the murderer is held off by a boy with a lighter?"

That whining aside, I really liked it when Morris began to dig though the flaming notebooks.  Realistic? No.  But great stuff!  A man burning alive as he chases the thing he's killed to get.  Ultimately the very thing he's had to have, he's done anything to get -- is the thing that has him.

5. Ending.  The novel returns to the world of Mr. Mercedes, as Bill goes to visit Brady.  Is Brady possibly finding a way to get up and play tricks -- maybe even murder -- on the hospital staff?  The ending, which has a splash of telekinesis, is the only place I can think of where the paranormal has entered the trilogy.  Makes me wonder: Will the next novel center on Brady?  Will it involve more element of horror?

All that whining aside, I liked this a lot more than Mercedes.  Why?  Well, the plot itself, the engine that drove the book, was much more engaging.  And, King didn't try to make Morris sympathetic.  In Mercedes there were those strange scenes between mama and her boy; stuff that served to help us understand what made Brady tick.  Morris might be jut as complicated (he did, after all, kill his favorite author because he felt the guy sold out) but we don't have to spend too long in his head or his past.

Finders Keepers Journal 2: There's A Lot Of Blood Here

I was out walking tonight, innocently reading a well written mystery novel when -- the mystery novel turned into a horror novel.  Oh yeah. . . this is Stephen King at the wheel.  Sweet!

A few random notes on Finders Keepers thus far.  (I'm in the final pages.  1 hour 30 minutes left on ipod.)

1. There are no "nice" bad guys here.  Often Stephen King makes you feel kind of warm toward those monsters in his books..  You might not like them, and yet when their scenes came you quietly rooted for them.  That's not the case here.  There's nothing to like in ole Morris; the sooner King dispenses with him the better.

2. King is a master not only of horror, but suspense.  Yes, I know that's Hitchcock's playground, but King fits in just fine.

3. The story is built on an interesting premise.  What if. . .
What if a famous author was murdered and along with a small fortune in cash, his hand written first drafts of some unpublished novels were taken.  Then, after hiding the loot, the criminals were either killed or landed themselves in prison.  And then, what if. . . a boy found the loot.  What insues from there is edge of your seat stuff.

4. I like Hodges.  Not sure why, since he seems your run of the mill gumshoe.  But I like the guy.  He really is cut of the most simple "mystery novel detective" cloth.  Maybe that's why I like him; I don't have to take a lot of time to get to know Hodges, because I already know him from American lore.

5. As is so normal in a King story, characters make decisions that are absolutely nuts.  You want to yell at them.  They ought to get knocked off just for being so stupid.  I'm not saying who, because some of you whine about spoilers -- but let's just say there's a certain teen who isn't good at decision making.  What's more, teeny boy resists the most natural "outs" for the difficult situations he gets himself into.  He consistently makes his own path more difficult.  Just like a teen, right?  Not really.  Teens tend to take the path of least resistance.  This character is actually pretty self assured.

6. King has not forgotten how to identify with the working family.  The stolen cash is given to the family in increments of about $500.  For them -- this is life changing.  For King, its a drop in the bucket.  (Not that he showed me his checkbook recently.)  But it can be easy for a person with means to forget when just an extra hundred or more can do for a family.  My wife started working this year and it was almost instantly life changing; and we're not even talking about a lot of money.  I'm glad King didn't bump the number up to something like a thousand or more.

Like Mr. Mercedes, Finders is told in the present tense.  I like it a lot -- but I didn't know it was legal.  Sure, the kid in creative writing did it; but he was weird.  Stephen King does it justice.

Finally, I want to note something that should be an entire blog post: Finders Keepers is about books.  Books King made up and books we all know.  The murdered author, John Rothstein, reminds me of J.D. Salinger, who wrote the acclaimed Catcher int he Rye. (I'm not sure why I had to read that in High School.)  

Finders Keepers Journal 1: Oh Yeah!

Finders Keepers is the sequel – kind of – to Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes.  But, in typical King fashion, the novel doesn’t quite feel like a sequel.  Because the story doesn’t pick up where Mercedes left off, it backs up and moves through scenes we’ve already been to in the first novel, but this time with different characters.  Thus we the reader relive the horror once again, but from a new angle.

Finders Keepers is certainly it’s own book; but it is wound tight with Mr. Mercedes references and story twists.

I’ve been away from reading Stephen King for a while, and the arrival of Finders Keepers caught me by surprise.  “Oh, is that this week?”  And then a little fear.  I couldn’t even remember everything Mr. Mercedes was about; details had slipped away.  Was I ready to return?  What if the magic had left?  But the warmth hasn’t gone anywhere.  Those “OH YES!” moments of reading a Stephen King novel come quick in Finders Keepers.  That’s partly because it is a second novel, so King is giving us easter eggs right from the get go.

You know about Stephen King “Oh yes!” moments, right?
That’s when Carrie burns up her school, and your heart goes, YES!
When a writer pulls off something, maybe something you didn't see coming, and you're amazed at how they did it.  When Roland steps into the world of The Stand.  Or, when the corpse comes to life in Revival.  Or when the grieving father carries his dead child up to the pet cemetery, and you know this novel has some traction.  Inside, you're going, "Oh yeah!"

I love it when two books come together and you feel distant sparks.  Like when Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne touch.  Of course, Mercedes and Finders are supposed touch.  But the way King does it is mesmerizing.  He doesn’t just bop on with the story, picking up where Mercedes left off.  He starts a new story, running alongside and intersecting the time line of the first novel before eventually starting on a fresh track.  This is brilliant!  And powerful when done by a master like King.

Characters:

As with any King book, the characters take center stage in the story telling.  What I like is how very complex King makes characters.  These people feel real.  Someone injured by the evil Mr. Mercedes isn’t just a poor pitiful victim in a Stephen King novel; they are a real person.  King shows us the emotional pain a physical injury can bring to a marriage.  I like it that King allows characters, children, to make up expressions for their parents behavior.  Adults don’t just argue, it’s the arkie barkies.

By the way, any time someone digs up a buried treasure chest in a Stephen King book, your heart should start pounding.  Because -- I mean, it's Stephen King!  Who knows what's in that chest.  Could be pirates gold or money.  But it could be rotted body parts or a clown nose.

Writing:

A quick note here about the style of the book.  First, unlike Mercedes, I have not detected that the novel is told is strict present tense.

Second, there are points where the narration allows dialogue to flow like a play.  You know:
Dad:
Mom:
Dad:
(A side from the one observing.)
This is interesting because I haven’t ever seen King use this approach in a novel.  Certainly he’s written plenty of scripts, but novels usually have the normal back and forth flow of quotes mingled with narration.  In fact, I was unaware that it was “okay” for a novel to use this style until I read The Keep, by Jennifer Egan.  I was so startled by how easy she made the dialogue using this format that I incorporated into my own writing.

Just under the surface of Finders Keepers is the ever evolving discussion about The Writer.  King gave us a first glimpse into the writer in Misery.  In Finders Keepers, a writers notebooks become part of the driving force of the novel.

Of course, King has insisted he doesn’t use an idea notebook.  In fact, he’s said that a writers notebook is a great way to preserve bad ideas.  The good ones, King says, stick with you.  (This is like preachers who insist they don’t use notes. The truth is, they don’t always stay on topic and tend to talk too long.)

That aside, there are certainly piles of Stephen King notebooks we would all love to see.  Much if not all of Dream catcher was written by hand and filled a pile of notebooks.  Wouldn’t you like to have that in your collection?  Finders Keepers is partly about a guy who steals a writers notebooks.