End of Watch (Bill Hodges Series #3)

by Stephen King

Overview

Now an AT&T Audience Original Series

The fabulously suspenseful and "smashing" (The New York Times Book Review) final novel in the Bill Hodges trilogy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers!

For nearly six years, in Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, Brady Hartsfield has been in a persistent vegetative state. A complete recovery seems unlikely for the insane perpetrator of the “Mercedes Massacre,” in which eight people were killed and many more maimed for life. But behind the vacant stare, Brady is very much awake and aware, having been pumped full of experimental drugs...scheming, biding his time as he trains himself to take full advantage of the deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room. Brady Hartsfield is about to embark on a new reign of terror against thousands of innocents, hell-bent on taking revenge against anyone who crossed his path—with retired police detective Bill Hodges at the very top of that long list....

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501190377
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	08/29/2017
Series:	Bill Hodges Series , #3
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	75,999
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, and Doctor Sleep are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Hometown:

Bangor, Maine

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1947

Place of Birth:

Portland, Maine

Education:

B.S., University of Maine at Orono, 1970

Website:

http://www.stephenking.com

Editorial Reviews

6/7/2016
Back in 2002, frustrated by his slow recovery from injuries sustained in a horrific accident, Stephen King informally announced his retirement from writing. That quickly proved to be a symptom of depression, and thank goodness, because some of King’s most interesting work has been produced in the last decade and a half—including his Bill Hodges Trilogy, beginning with Mr. Mercedes (which won the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Novel) and followed by Finders Keepers and End of Watch. Read More

B&N Reads

A Stephen King novel is thrilling to read; he's never bound by the parameters of one genre…There are many stereotypical themes and devices in crime fiction: righteous cops shooting a criminal at the novel's end, gender constructs salvaged from another age, invincible heroes and so on. End of Watch is burdened by none of them. It's a great big genre-busting romp, a gloriously fitting end to the Bill Hodges trilogy.

The New York Times Book Review - Denise Mina

…the smashing finale of his "Mr. Mercedes" trilogy…[King] just can't help writing like a stone-cold pro…This is his best book since the vastly ambitious Under the Dome (2009), and it's part of a newly incisive, reality-based part of his career. At some point, the phantasmagorical became less central to him than the frightening prospects to be found in the real world. And he uses his ever-powerful intimacy with readers to convey the damage life can wreak.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

★ 04/25/2016
After two straightforward crime thrillers, MWA Grand Master King (Finders Keepers) torques this third and final novel featuring retired detective Bill Hodges into his trademark terror territory. Hodges has long suspected that Brady Hartsfield, the brain-damaged mass murderer captured at the end of Mr. Mercedes, has been faking his catatonia, and his suspicions are reinforced by rumors circulating in Brady’s hospital ward (in what may be a Midwestern state) that he can move objects telekinetically. The truth is actually worse: with the help of secretly administered experimental drugs and skillfully hacked computer technology, Brady has found a way to project his personality into others and commandeer them as his “organic wheelchairs.” The stage is set for Brady to compel mass suicide among users of a handheld gaming device whose interface he’s hijacked, and to draw out Hodges to settle a personal score. King has dealt before with this novel’s different themes—endowment with dangerous supernatural powers, the zombifying effect of modern consumer electronics—but he finds fresh approaches to them and inventive ways to introduce them in the lives of his recurring cast of sympathetic characters, whose pains and triumphs the reader feels. King’s legion of fans will find this splice of mystery and horror a fitting finale to his Bill Hodges trilogy. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents. (June)

Publishers Weekly

“Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy has proved to be a welcome change of pace for the best-selling Maine author... The wintery, blood-soaked climax of the novel provides a fitting resolution not only to the action at hand but to the trilogy as a whole. King will always be best known for his tales of supernatural horror, but it’s great fun to watch him experiment with form, genre and subject matter. He has more than his fair share of laurels, but he never seems to rest on them. Here’s hoping King can maintain the creative momentum of the Bill Hodges Trilogy as he heads into the next uncharted literary territory.

Michael Berry

Praise for Finders Keepers

“Stephen King’s superb new stay-up-all-night thriller, Finders Keepers, is a sly,often poignant tale of literary obsession that recalls the themes of his classic 1987 novel Misery…a love letter to the joys of reading and to American literature… wonderful, scary, moving.

The Washington Post Elizabeth Hand

A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.

The New York Times

Keeps readers on edge... King stitches together threads from these events to weave a taut conclusion to the tale of Brady Hartsfield. But — and with King you never know — he does leave open the chance that some of the characters will be back. Because in Stephen King’s world, is anyone ever really gone for good?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Amanda St. Amand

The book leaves a surprisingly deep, melancholy mark, crystallizing the themes that have become prevalent in King’s recent work...’End of Watch’ hurtles toward a conclusion you anticipate and dread in equal measure — that wonderful, terrible anxiety King’s constant readers have been relishing for more than four decades now. ‘He’s not done with you yet,’ reads an ominous message Hodges receives on his computer in End of Watch. We’re lucky. King isn’t done with us either.

The Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A deliciously savory conclusion to King’s phenomenal hard-boiled Mr. Mercedes trilogy...gripping... as strong a King series as The Dark Tower in terms of characterization and pure storytelling. When it comes to the gumshoe genre, though, fingers crossed King’s not yet closed for business.”

USA Today Brian Truitt

King works his customary storytelling magic, unspooling the plot threads almost as quickly as readers can turn the pages... If you're wrapping up the trilogy, enjoy. If you're just getting started, you're in for a thrilling ride.”

The Associated Press Rob Merrill

“Outstanding... ‘End of Watch’ gives us King at the height of his powers. Masterfully plotted, the novel is propelled toward its page-blurring conclusion by two deadly forces: Hodges’ advancing disease and Brady’s relentless murderous impulse.

Newsday John Wilwol

"The new book is so good, being at least mildly obsessed with it is understandable. The finest thing about it, however, is that the author has another story to tell before the finale of this excellent series.

USA Today

No one can create a villain quite like King. . . . [A]ll the elements come together in a very public, potentially explosive finale (with a surprising post script). King fans may find themselves furiously turning pages long into the night.

Seattle Times

Think of Mr. Mercedes as an AC/DC song: uncluttered, chugging with momentum, and a lot harder to pull off than it looks. . . . King has written a hot rod of a novel,perfect for a few summer days at the pool. Mercedes-Benz commands drivers to demand ‘the best or nothing.’ In pop-fiction terms, that motto still applies to Stephen King, too. With apologies to AC/DC, the highway to hell never felt so fun.

Christian Science Monitor

Praise for Mr. Mercedes

"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."

Associated Press

A satisfying conclusion to this crackerjack detective series... As the book’s title suggests, there is finality and loss in the final pages. Readers may find themselves wiping away a few tears as this well-written, involving series comes to an end.

The Seattle Times Doug Knoop

A taut, suspenseful race-against-time book . . . [King is] in reliably fine form.

The New York Times

"The new book is so good, being at least mildly obsessed with it is understandable. The finest thing about it, however, is that the author has another story to tell before the finale of this excellent series.

USA Today

Praise for Mr. Mercedes

"Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers."

Associated Press Staff

★ 05/15/2016
Brady Hartsfield awakens from a coma with terrible new powers, and the stage is set for the tense, thrilling conclusion to King's Bill Hodges trilogy (after Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers). After being put in the city's brain trauma center by Hodges and his partner, Holly Gibney, and condemned to a life as an invalid at the conclusion of Mr. Mercedes, the newly conscious Hartsfield discovers he can manipulate things—and people—with his mind. When people connected to the massacre in the first book start committing suicide, Hodges races against time to find out why. One would assume that a writer like King, who has been on top of his game for decades, would eventually run out of ideas. Instead, he serves up one of the most original crime thrillers to come along in years, thanks to his trademark supernatural flair. However, the paranormal takes a backseat to a story that is essentially about human weakness, how easily one can be exploited, and the strength it takes simply to live. VERDICT A spectacular, pulse-pounding, read-in-one-sitting wrap-up that will more than satisfy King's Constant Readers (as he addresses his fans before and after almost every book). [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]—Tyler Hixson, Library Journal

Library Journal

2016-03-17
You know it's a politicized time when the bad guy in a King novel loses points not strictly for being evil but for "living like Donald Trump." "It's always darkest before the dawn," King cheerfully reminds us at the very outset of this work of mayhem and murder, closing a trilogy devoted to retired detective Bill Hodges and investigative partner Holly Gibney. Yes, it is, and "darker than a woodchuck's asshole," too, reminding us that we're in King's New England, where weird things are always happening. Bill—well, his real first name is Kermit—has a doozy of a case from the very start: those weird things leapfrog back to the first volume, to a time, seven years before the present, when the perp of the so-called Mercedes Massacre drifted off into comaland. Throughout the trilogy, King has both honored and toyed with the conventions of hard-boiled crime fiction, and it seemed as if he'd be staking out that genre as his own; now, though, he steers back into the realm of horror that for sure belongs to him, for the baddie, Brady Hartsfield, who had merely been an incest-committing mass murderer before, has now acquired psychic powers and is experimenting merrily with ways to convince the innocent to kill themselves—and perhaps worse. Having lost some mobility, Brady is deeply ticked off—and, as King writes, "Being in a situation like that, who wouldn't want to kill a bunch of people?" Right, and it's up to Kermit/Bill and Holly to stop "Z-Boy," as he's now calling himself, from further mischief, very much more easily said than done. Suffice it to say that heavy machinery—having been run over, King hates cars, and having grown up when he did, he doesn't have much use for gizmo technology, either—figures into both the crime and its cure, and suffice it to say that both are exceedingly messy. Gleefully gross. And a few of the principals even outlive the tale, meaning there's hope for a sequel, assuming King wants to play with the definition of trilogy, too....

Kirkus Reviews