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Finders Keepers

edited May 2015 in General news
King tweeted yesterday that Mr. Mercedes is the first novel in a projected trilogy. The second book will be called Finders Keepers, due out next year.

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  • Finders Keepers will, according to King, be published in the first half of 2015.
  • Scribner has released their description for Finders Keepers (pub date June 2, 2015)

    “Wake up, genius.” So begins King’s instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, a Salinger-like icon who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

    Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Sauberg finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

    Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life—for good, for bad, forever.
  • This premise has me much more excited about the second book now.
  • Hodder & Stoughton has released their cover art (wraparound) for the novel.
  • edited February 2015
    image
  • I sense a theme for this series.
  • Will Patton will once again read the audio version. I'm listening to him do Mr. Mercedes right now -- I like his gruff voice.
  • The first two reviews are in.


    Library Journal

    What would you do if you found a buried
    treasure? Thirteen-year-old Peter Saubers asks himself this very
    question when he finds an old trunk buried under a tree. His family has
    fallen on hard times following the economic downturn in 2008. Aside from
    a relatively small amount of money in the chest, there are over 100
    hand-written notebooks. Peter realizes that they were penned by John
    Rothstein, a renowned novelist who was murdered long before Peter was
    born. Peter was one of the millions who had been touched by Rothstein's
    works. Also influenced by the novels is Morris Bellamy, an obsessed fan
    who killed the author years ago and buried the trunk. He's in prison for
    a different crime, and about to be paroled. Now the protagonists King
    introduced in Mr. Mercedes-Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson-are charged with protecting Peter and his family from
    Bellamy.- -VERDICT King's many, many fans will want this, especially
    those who loved Misery, but the second volume in King's projected
    trilogy will appeal to anyone who enjoys suspense and action, or anyone
    who finds enlightenment in reading about the internal struggle between
    right and wrong. It's not necessary to have read the previous book to
    enjoy this one. [See Prepub Alert, 11/25/14.]-Elizabeth Masterson,
    Mecklenburg Cty. Jail Lib., Charlotte, NC © Copyright 2015. Library
    Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
    redistribution permitted.



    Publishers Weekly

    Bill Hodges, the retired detective hero
    of King's Mr. Mercedes (2014), stars in this taut thriller about the
    thin line separating fandom from fanaticism. In 1978, Morris Bellamy
    murders his literary idol, John Rothstein (clearly modeled on J.D.
    Salinger), and pilfers more than 100 notebooks filled with Rothstein's
    unpublished writing. After serving 35 years in the clink for another
    crime, Bellamy returns to the Midwestern everyville of Northfield to
    reclaim the stashed notebooks-only to discover that they've fallen into
    the hands of teenage Rothstein fan Pete Saubers, who's in dire need of
    Hodges's protective services when the murder-minded Bellamy comes after
    him. Bellamy is one of King's creepiest creations-a literate and
    intelligent character whom any passionate reader will both identify with
    and be repelled by. His relentless pursuit of a treasure that his
    twisted thinking has determined is rightfully his generates the
    nail-biting suspense that's the hallmark of King's best work. A sharp
    closing twist suggests Hodges will be back. Agent: Chuck Verrill,
    Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC.
    All rights reserved.



  • Interest stoked.
  • edited April 2015
    And here are the other two early reviews.  (They came out pretty rapidly this time.)

    Kirkus Reviews

    Kirkus Reviews 2015 April #2
    There are
    suggestions throughout this second installment of a planned trilogy
    that King's motley, appealing trio of detectives from Mr. Mercedes
    (2014) have some bad juju in their collective future that may make the
    case here look like a relative afternoon at the mall. As in Misery and
    The Shining, King swan dives into the looniness lurking at both ends of
    the writer-reader transaction. The loony in this particular joint is a
    pale, red-lipped sociopath named Morris Bellamy, who, in 1978, robs and
    murders his favorite novelist, John Rothstein, because he can't forgive
    him for making his lead character, Jimmy Gold, go into advertising in
    the last published installment of his epic trilogy. Yet along with the
    cash Bellamy collects during his crime are several notebooks comprising a
    rough draft for a fourth installment suggesting an outcome for Gold
    that Bellamy finds potentially more satisfying. Bellamy buries a trunk
    with the money and notebooks for safekeeping, but a 35-year pr ison
    hitch interrupts his plans. By the time Bellamy is paroled in 2014, Pete
    Saubers, a high school student who's something of a Rothstein
    aficionado himself, has excavated the trunk, sent the money in
    anonymously labeled parcels to his financially strapped parents, and
    stashed the notebooks for a possible sale on the proverbial rainy
    day—whose somewhat premature arrival comes, alas, at roughly the same
    time Bellamy appears in the Sauberses' life. Fortunately, Pete's back is
    covered by the odd-squad private detective team of portly, kindly
    ex-cop Bill Hodges, wisecracking digital whiz Jerome Robinson, and
    Hodges' phobic-savant researcher Holly Gibney, who first pooled their
    talents in Mr. Mercedes—a book whose central crime, the murder and
    maiming of innocents by a luxury car, looms over this sequel like a
    stubborn shadow. This being a King novel, the narrative hums and roars
    along like a high-performance vehicle, even though there are times when
    its readers may find themselves several tics ahead of the book's plot
    developments. But such qualms are overcome by the plainspoken,
    deceptively simple King style, which has once again fashioned a
    rip-snorting entertainment; one that also works as a sneaky-smart satire
    of literary criticism and how even the most attentive readers can often
    miss the whole point behind making up characters and situations.
    Reading a King novel as engrossing as this is a little like backing in a
    car with parking assist: after a while, you just take your hands off
    the wheel and the pages practically turn themselves. Copyright Kirkus
    2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.


    Booklist

    This thematic bookend to Misery
    (1987) features another very disappointed literary fan. In fact, in the
    opening scene, down-on-his-luck Morris Bellamy shoots to death John
    Rothstein, the reclusive Updike/Salinger amalgam who crushed Morris by
    letting his iconic character Jimmy Gold “sell out” at the end of the
    famous Gold trilogy. Morris makes off with Rothstein’s cash and, even
    better, dozens of unpublished manuscripts, but before he can do anything
    but stash them, he ends up in the slammer. Enter young Pete Saubers,
    whose poverty-stricken family is rescued when he finds the stash and
    secretly uses the money to right their financial ship. Only when it runs
    out does the now 17-year-old Pete decide to sell the Rothstein
    notebooks. Eventually the crime-stopping trio from Mr. Mercedes (2014)
    returns (if you haven’t read it, they pop up here rather abruptly) to
    protect Pete when Morris comes after his property—with a hatchet. As
    with Mercedes, the small-time feel creates an amiability even
    when things slow down or when the blood starts to gush. King’s got his
    fedora back on, and it’s great fun to watch him have a good time.

    HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: For those one or two mystery nuts who’ve kept from King because of the—ick!—horror, here’s a handy on-ramp.

    — Daniel Kraus

     

     
    This title has been recommended for young adult readers:

    YA/General Interest: Two young main characters—Pete, 17, and Jerome, early college-age—make this an even better YA fit than most King. —Daniel Kraus

  • Like Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers will be excerpted in Entertainment Weekly. (5/15/15, The Hateful Eight--at least, 3 of them--on the cover.)

    http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/06/this-weeks-cover-inside-quentin-tarantinos-bloody-brutal-new-western-hateful
  • Enter for chance to win signed copy of Finders Keepers by @StephenKing, 1/20 CD audiobooks, 1/20 unsigned hardcovers https://stephenking.com/promo/finders-keepers/sweepstakes.php
  • Awesome artwork.

    Great excerpt too.
  • edited June 2015
    It does, but out of context it won't mean anything to anyone.

    I contributed an essay about Finders Keepers to the King for a Year blog.
  • Off to a writer's retreat this weekend so won't start this until next week.
  • King lands at No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list with Finders Keepers, the sequel to Mr. Mercedes, which peaked at No. 2 last year. It's King's 17th debut at No. 1, and his 19th book to hit the top spot.
  • I enjoyed this book, but not as much as I liked the first book of the trilogy, Mr. Mercedes.  It will be very interesting when the third book, End of Watch, is published to see just where the story goes.

    John

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