End of Watch

The magnificent conclusion to the New York Times bestseller trilogy, which started with Finders Keepers and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner)—The evil "Mercedes Killer" in End of Watch causes his adversaries to commit suicide, and if Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney don't find out a method to stop him, they too will become victims.

Something has stirred in Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic. Something malevolent. Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. His doctors say there's little chance of anything like a full recovery. Beneath the drool and staring, Brady is really awake and has frightening new abilities that let him inflict unfathomable destruction without ever leaving his hospital bed.

Bill Hodges, the retired police investigator who saved Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers from certain death, is now running an investigative business with Holly Gibney, his colleague, who struck Hartsfield in the head and sent him to the brain damage unit. When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill’s heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.

Stephen King combines the heart-pounding, supernatural suspense that has been his best-selling hallmark with the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers in End of Watch, bringing the Hodges trilogy to an exquisitely horrifying climax. The end product is a spine-tingling suspenseful look at human weakness. King is the greatest at it.