Finders Keepers by Stephen King

After last year’s absorbing thriller Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King returns with its sequel as the unlikely team of ex-policeman Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney tried to make sense of the City Center Massacre and also save the life of Pete Saubers from the clutches of a near-deranged Morris Bellamy. While the main thread of the story revolves around Pete and Bellamy, it also delves deep into the plot of Mr. Mercedes and the massacre which took the lives of eight innocent people, maimed three, seriously injured twelve and caused minor injuries to seventeen others.

Finders Keepers by Stephen King begins in the year 1978 with the murder of a novelist at his New Hampshire cabin by a die-hard admirer. The cloistered eighty-year-old novelist John Rothstein found himself awake when the privacy of his cabin was invaded by an obsessed fan Morris Bellamy and two accomplices. Not content with the cash available, Bellamy wants to make sure if the rumored sell-out of his favorite character Jimmy Gold in the next Rothstein novel is true, and the ensuing melee proved disastrous.

Bellamy’s plans unraveled when he was arrested and sent to prison for thirty-five years for another violent crime, but not before he stashed the loot away. A high school student Pete Saubers, whose father Thomas Saubers was seriously injured in Mr. Mercedes, and whose family is struggling to make both ends meet, found the buried treasure and sent the money to his parents concealing his real identity while keeping the drafts of Rothstein’s novels. All hell broke loose when Bellamy is released on parole in 2014 and discovered his treasures missing. It is up to King’s likeable trio of Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney to keep Pete from harm’s way and protect his family.

Finders Keepers by Stephen King is an ambitious and well-crafted hard-boiled thriller which can be read as a stand-alone though it is the middle book of a trilogy. Its masterful pacing and riveting plotting makes it a heart thumping read, intensely thrilling and absolutely gripping. Author Stephen King as is his wont, delivers a novel that has stunned me by its shrewdness and ability to sustain interest.

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Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel

There are various approaches to a story. While the vast majority of the books that we have in the market are geared towards the entertainment and pleasure of its readers, there are some books which are designed to engage the readers, stimulate one to action and evoke a sense of duty, awareness and self-discovery as a result of its reading. And it is into that latter category that Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel belongs.

A suspenseful contemporary mystery thriller, Crooked Little Lies follows the events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of Bo Laughlin, a quirky character familiar to most residents of the small Texas town of Hardys Walk. Bo is also the step-brother of Annie Beauchamp, a young woman who works in the café in town, and they both have lost their mothers. It is also the story of Lauren Wilder, an old-fashioned suburban wife and mother of two adolescents - Drew, 14, and Kenzie, 11 – and how her life unchangeably intertwined with Bo’s disappearance.

Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel is an absorbing and captivating story that is strung with elements of mystery and suspense. What emphatically sets apart this particular story is how the author sets the stage for the story to fold up and the underlying refrain of how an incident can affect an individual, family or an entire community. Author Barbara Taylor Sissel's eclectic cast of characters in the form of Cooper Grant, Lauren’s her husband Jeff, Lauren’s sister Tara and drug-addict boyfriend Greg, and other secondary players make it a satisfying read. Though the ending did not come as a surprise, the mastery with which it was build up makes for an exciting read.

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