End of Watch

The Suicide Prince Strikes

End of Watch is Stephen King’s fifty-fifth novel (hat tip) and the third of the Bill Hodges trilogy.

In the first book, Mr Mercedes, a mentally-disturbed man, Brady Hartsfield, drives a stolen Mercedes into a crowd of job seekers, who had queued up at the City Centre on a cold morning. He is clever enough not to be caught, which bothers the cop, Bill Hodges, who retired with an unsolved case on his head.

Now, living on his own, with nothing to do and no friends, Hodges starts feeling depressed. He is forced out of his self-pitying idleness by the Brady—a computer wiz—who taunts and goads Hodges into trying to catch him. He deviously pushes the hapless owner of the Mercedes to commit suicide by messing with her computer, and also plants thoughts of suicide into Hodges’s mind.

Then, Brady tries to commit mass murder at a stadium full of kids who have come to watch a popular boy band perform. He intends to do that by blowing himself up with a home-rigged bomb, but Hodges and his companions, Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney foil his plans. Holly whacks Brady on the head with a heavy object, leading to his being hospitalized in a vegetative state.

In the second book, Finders Keepers, Hodges has recovered from a heart attack suffered during the stadium attack and set up a detective agency with Holly, who is a “bundle of nervous tics and strange associations” but fiercely devoted to the older man, and very fond of young Jerome. A case connected to the first book turns up; Hodges who goes to visit Brady regularly is convinced he is faking mental damage to avoid trial for his crimes. The nurses at the hospital are scared of Brady, because he makes strange things happen through telekinesis.

In End Of Watch, the full extent of Brady’s diabolical powers are unleashed. An unscrupulous doctor, Felix Babineau, experiments on Brady with some drugs which give the criminal supernatural abilities that the doctor is unable to control, and which lead his downfall. Brady’s damaged brain gets fully functional, though he continues to pretend being catatonic. But with the help a defunct electronic gadget called Zappit, which he has contrived to place with survivors of the foiled concert attack, and his former co-worker, Freddi, he triggers off a spate of suicides.

Alarm Bells ring in the Hodges camp when Bill’s old partner, Pete Huntley, tells him about a fresh case of murder-suicide linked to the Mercedes massacre, and then Jerome’s cheerful kid sister Barbara tries to kill herself. Hodges, pushing seventy and low on energy, discovers he has pancreatic cancer, and his precarious health adds a layer of urgency and tension to the proceedings.  

If Hodges and Holly catch on to Brady’s modus operandi very soon, the “architect of suicide” never underestimates his nemesis and always skips one step ahead of them. The two have to trace and stop Brady themselves, because nobody will believe what he has been up to and how. And by the time, they can convince the cops, Brady will have succeeded in his evil plot.

The friendship between the young and moviestar handsome African American Jerome, the middle-aged eccentric Holly and the old cop is suffused with a rare warmth, and makes the reader wish the series would go on for a few books more.

Stephen King’s mastery over the thriller makes the story totally plausible and hence, very scary.  The book can be a standalone read, but it is better to read all three books for full impact—the first being arguably the best.

End Of Watch

By Stephen King

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Pages: 368