Stephen King’s Holly Gibney is back in ‘Never Flinch’

You unfailingly get your money s worth with mega-bestselling author Stephen King The guy knows how to fill up pages and although it s no -plus tome like The Stand Never Flinch his seventh Holly Gibney outing is pages strong To be sure King has more to offer than a solid page-to-cost ratio He could write the book equivalent of bubble wrap and I would still want to read it but what is delivered swathed in shipping material sometimes fails to meet expectations Unfortunately that s the episode with King s latest Holly Gibney debuted in s Mr Mercedes the first book in King s Bill Hodges trilogy Holly is introduced as an unstable technological savant with subterranean levels of self-esteem who connects with the retired detective as he tracks a killer responsible for getting behind the wheel of a Mercedes and mowing down several people outside a job fair As the analysis goes on Holly begins to find her footing and to piece together the confidence her mother systematically shredded In the next novels Finders Keepers and End of Watch Holly blossoms under Hodges tutelage discovering that she is a pretty good detective herself one with well-developed intuition although the attribute is often exhibited as something nagging at her and she should know what it is but she does not It comes in handy as particular of the cases like The Outsider Cynthia Erivo played Holly in the HBO adaptation and novella If It Bleeds brush the supernatural The book Holly finds her coming into her own as she looks for a missing young woman an inquiry that will force Holly to come to terms with her fraught relationship with her less-than-ideal mother With Never Flinch Holly s enhancement as a character comes to a screeching halt For reasons that don t make sense within the arc King has created Holly is drawn into becoming the bodyguard for Kate McKay a women s rights activist with a stalker whose violence grows as McKay s cross-country lecture tour continues Holly hits the road with the activist and brings along a gun despite her deep need to be near her home and her abhorrence of weapons Motivation is problematic to say the least This is also true of her newfound friendship with police detective Izzy Jaynes a recurring character The lunch buddies talk over Jaynes research of a serial killer who appears to be going after jurors by proxy slaying people randomly to inspire guilt in those who convicted an innocent man In previous books the antipathy between the women was not subtle although there does seem to be grudging respect in later interactions But they certainly aren t friends and yet here we are The stalker-serial killer story lines beggar belief too and other recurring characters seem to be here just so they can be kidnapped In the afterword King admits even his wife communicated him he could do better after reading the first draft Three rewrites later and he s happy enough with the version for publication And he s right It is enough but Holly deserved something more Tribune News Provision NEVER FLINCH By Stephen King Scribner Grade B-