Review | Stephen King retreads old ground in new novel End of Watch
The master of horror brings his first detective series to a thrilling conclusion in the final instalment of his trilogy.
By Stephen King
(Hodder & Stoughton)
★★★
There are several ways to approach End of Watch. It is American horror and fantasy novelist Stephen King’s first real venture into crime fiction. It’s the final part of a trilogy that began with Mr Mercedes and continued with Finders Keepers . And it stages the endgame between the series’ hero, Bill Hodges, and its villain, Brady Hartsfield, who in episode one ploughed a vintage Mercedes into a crowd of jobseekers before threatening a pop concert full of teenagers.
Perhaps the best way to describe End of Watch, however, is as a self-consciously late work. That’s late as in King, the near veteran (he’s now 68), and late as in death. Death is hardly a new concern in King’s work: he has probably killed more people in more inventive ways than almost any other writer. What is relatively recent is the preoccupation with the more gradual tolls taken by time and age.
King’s title is cop-speak for an officer’s final days before retirement, which Hodges’ former colleague, Pete, is experiencing as the plot starts. But the broader existential implications of the phrase properly apply to Hodges himself, who after a couple of plot delays is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Death as it stalks End of Watch is represented not by axe-wielding maniacs or even nasty Hartsfield, but by two far more prolific killers: disease and suicide. While the first afflicts Hodges, the latter is Hartsfield’s particular obsession: his plot to murder thousands at the pop concert was meant to climax with his own death. Unluckily for humanity, he ended up in a coma, albeit one that hardly kept a bad man down. The flickers of supernatural powers that were glimpsed in previous instalments are now fully operational.