The World of Books End Of Watch Stephen King by Richa Mohan ©

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World of Books. So did you enjoy reading the Avenue of Mysteries? Today, we travel into the realm of the unreal, the supernatural or the plain “out of world.” And dive into the imaginative world of the “King” of horror. Stephen King. The name itself needs no introduction. He alone is responsible for thrilling a whole generation with his works, and creating new followers every day. King has numerous bestsellers and movies as well as TV adaptations to his name and has won many awards. He was born in Portland, Maine and initially qualified to be a teacher at high school. However, he was unable to find a job immediately, and had to work as a laborer to support his family (he was by now married). He supplemented his income by selling short stories to men’s magazines many of which were later compiled and published in the book “Night Shift” and other anthologies. Even as a kid he wrote stories for fun contributing to a magazine his brother used to publish. In 1971, he got a job at an Academy in Maine but he continued writing short stories and novels. In 1973, his first novel was accepted for publication by Doubleday & Co. It is said that during this time he developed a drinking problem which bothered him most of his life. He also wrote some stories under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. King was always inclined towards horror and even as a kid used to love reading such books. His book, “On Writing” is as much a memoir as a bible for aspiring writers. In it he acknowledges his addiction to drugs and alcohol, which he finally quit in the late 1980s and has remained sober since. In 2003 he was honored with the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, he was also the recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 2014 and various others such as the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award. End of Watch - Picking up a Stephen King novel is always a delight and this one does not disappoint. Before moving on, I must warn you that there might be a few spoilers. With great trepidation I opened the first page and was gradually introduced to the madness and evil that one human can think of. The story begins in 2009, when two paramedics are called to an MCI (short for mass casualty incident) site. You are left wondering, already tense, about what could have happened. You travel with the paramedics to the site and are soon given a hint as a “car - it looked like a Mercedes, although he couldn’t be sure - ” comes straight at them, narrowly missing them. Though at that moment you don’t know the significance of this detail. Soon you see yourself approaching the accident site and realize that “scores of people were coming at them from the fog, a few sprinting nearly out of control because of the incline.” You reach the site and are introduced to a survivor who is going to be a vegetable for the rest of her life. You find out that a man drove his car into a job fair, killing many and maiming more and you want that man to die. And so begins your journey into the last of the trilogy “End of Watch.” King masterfully paints a canvas of suspense with a foreboding of evil, drawing you into the story till you become a part of the plot and are unable to extract yourself. It is as much a detective story as a chilling, suspense novel. The other two books of the trilogy are Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. In Mr Mercedes, the very first “hard-boiled detective novel,” by King, we are introduced to the villain Brady Hartesfield who ploughs through a crowd in a job fair to gain notoriety. Brady is a mama’s boy and a tech-whiz but twisted. After the incident, he is prevented from spreading more havoc by Hodge’s partner Holly Gibney, who hits Brady on the head with a sock loaded with ball bearings, landing him in the Brain Injury Unit of a hospital in a vegetative state, which is where we find him in the End of Watch. The second book “Finders Keepers” seems equally intriguing where a reader is obsessed with an author and throughout this book, as one review claims, Brady is in a vegetative state though hospital staff claim that there are strange occurrences around him and Hodges is sure that the story is not over yet. Finally, we reach the last book. Here the last survivor of the massacre, the woman who the paramedics saved, has committed suicide along with her mother, who used to take care of her. However, there are hints that that was not their life plan. So what actually happened? As a long-term fan of King, I was wondering if he had gone into a new genre of detective novel, but soon we are introduced to the super-fantastic world of Brady and we know that the king is at the top of his form. Soon it becomes clear that Brady, is able to “possess” other people’s minds around him. He is able to influence their actions while being bedridden the whole time! At one point in the novel you are as surprised as Brady when you see that he is able to look out of the window of the ward he is confined in through the eyes of a nurse. The modus operandi becomes clear as we get to know of a hypnotizing computer game that he uses to make people commit suicide. The reason, we soon find out, is a set of experimental drugs that a doctor who first attended to him was giving him. Since he was not allowed to experiment on humans he decided to use them on Brady, without telling anyone. After all, “there was no downside as long as he kept the results to himself until human trials were okayed. The man was a murderous degenerate who was never going to wake up, anyway.” King weaves a story with various sub-plots, each leading to the other. The last of the trilogy can easily be read as a standalone novel, with King introducing us to the background, interspersing it throughout the novel, in an interesting manner. In the book, Hodges and Holly are drawn into the case of the double suicide, by an old police friend, since all of them were connected with the Mercedes killing. Hodges also receives a letter from his nemesis - Brady. Who is busy engineering a mass suicide. Then a nurse attending to Brady kills herself in the most gruesome manner and the cat and mouse game begins. Will Hodges and Holly be able to stop him? Will Brady succeed in getting his revenge against the people who confined him to a bed? Will Hodges beat his nemesis once and for all or will he end up a victim? I can easily answer these questions. But then, where will the fun be in disclosing the end of a Stephen King novel! This is another bestseller, which will keep you on the edge of your seat. Pick up this book. It's a must read. Let me know what you think. Till next time, goodbye and stay tuned to EnglishWaves.