NEVER FLINCH
Stephen King (stephenking.com)
Hodder & Stoughton (hodder.co.uk)
£25
Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop
Welcome back to Buckeye City, Ohio, where the Chief of Detectives at the city’s Police Department has just received a disturbing letter from someone promising to kill thirteen innocent – and one guilty – people to atone for the murder of an innocent man in state prison. Lew Warwick shares the note with his best detective, Isabelle Jaynes, who turns to her friend, Holly Gibney, for help. Meanwhile, Holly has been tapped by controversial author, speaker and women’s rights activist Kate McKay to act as bodyguard while she tours the country to promote her latest book, following threats and overt attacks on her and her assistant as they move east from California. Throw in an aging soul singer looking to relaunch her career in Buckeye City’s Mingo Auditorium and it looks very like things might come to an explosive head in the city they call The Second Mistake on the Lake. And as usual, Holly Gibney and her friends from the Finders Keepers Detective Agency are right in the middle, and playing a more pivotal role than any of them might have expected.
If you’d asked me ten or fifteen years ago how I felt about Stephen King penning a series of detective novels featuring a socially awkward middle-aged lady, I probably would have told you that you were probably thinking of some other author. Or that it would never work. Or that the only series character I was interested in from Stephen King was Roland of Gilead. Never Flinch is the seventh story featuring that socially awkward middle-aged lady detective with a mind like a steel trap. King has talked on several occasions about how Holly keeps drawing him back, how he wants to check in on her and see how things are going. I know how he feels; Holly has quickly become a favourite character, and I’ve really enjoyed her adventures so far. Never Flinch is no exception, and shows us how Holly is growing and maturing over time – there are things Holly does here that we know she’d never even have considered during the events of Mr Mercedes, or even The Outsider. Unlike previous solo outings, Never Flinch is a straight thriller – no supernatural or inexplicable elements; just bad people doing bad things, which is sometimes more horrific than the shape changers or soul vampires that have turned up in the past.
Aside from all of the more interesting stuff that happens on the pages, Never Flinch is notable for finally giving the Ohio city we’ve been visiting since Mr Mercedes’ 2014 publication a name: Buckeye City. Nicknamed The Second Mistake on the Lake (Cleveland being the first, apparently), the city’s name has very little bearing on the story, but does allow King to do what he does best: build an ordinary, believable, familiar world. It allows him to identify Izzy Jaynes’ employer as the BCPD, and the long-defunct ice hockey team the Buckeye Bullets, whose condemned ice rink will play a very important role in the city. It also allows him to introduce us to Buckeye Brandon, podcaster and newshound, pain in the ass of the BCPD, but also the man who broke the news that Alan Duffrey was innocent, and sets in motion the series of events with which half of the novel, Izzy Jaynes and Holly Gibney are concerned.
Never Flinch presents the reader with two seemingly parallel stories: the serial killer plaguing Buckeye City and keeping Izzy Jaynes and partner Tom Atta on their toes; and the bodyguard job that takes Holly away from Buckeye City when things are starting to get interesting. With the serial killer, we’re as much in the dark as the police, despite King putting us in the head of the killer on a regular basis. We know he thinks of himself as “Trig” and that he may be a regular AA attendee, having signed his letter to the police “Bill Wilson”, the name of the organisation’s founder. We are aware of his motivation, twisted as it is, but King keeps us in the dark as to the underlying logic for as long as possible, but does drop breadcrumbs for the eagle-eyed reader, so stay on your toes. Kate McKay’s tour is another matter entirely: Kate’s assistant has bleach thrown in her face when she is mistaken for her employer, and almost falls victim to an anthrax-laced missive but for her quick thinking. After a couple of incidents where having a burly man act as their protector produce bad optics for a feminist icon, McKay reaches out to Holly, who agrees to take on the job despite never having worked as a bodyguard before. Her investigation into the stalker leads her to a young man who is acting on behalf of a church known for protesting outside abortion clinics, a church that has been in trouble with the law more than once for doing more than just protest.
This is King’s chance to examine the concept of a woman’s right to choose, and the extremes on both sides of that argument. McKay begins her nightly lectures by asking all of the men in the audience to raise a hand.
“Now those men who’ve had an abortion, keep your hands up. Those who haven’t, put your hands down.”
More laughter. Most of the women applaud as all the male hands go down.
“What, none of you? Wow! I mean holy jeepers!”
General laughter. Corrie has heard this warm-up routine many times.
“But who makes the laws here…?”
McKay’s strident advocacy of a woman’s right to choose makes her a target for those on the other side of the argument, people who often cite God in their arguments. In this case McKay’s stalker and attacker has been wound up and set on his way by the pastor and deacon of his church, a church that let his mother die because they would rather pray away the cancer than let her get treatment in a hospital. There’s no reasoning with these people, which puts our heroine, Miss Holly Gibney, in an interesting situation – she’s not known for her physical qualities and, beyond working out how to keep Kate McKay and Corrie Anderson alive, there isn’t too much for her brain to do…other than worry at the question of the serial killer currently plaguing her hometown.
Meanwhile back in Buckeye City, as Detectives Jaynes and Atta try to stay on the trail of the so-called Surrogate Juror Murderer, the city finds itself the temporary home of famed soul singer Sista Bessie, who plans to kick off a revival tour in the city’s Mingo Auditorium that summer. As a special treat, she wants to take one of Barbara Robinson’s recently-published poems and turn it into the closing number for her set. Barbara, a big fan of the singer quickly finds herself adopted by the band, and she and Sista Bessie quickly become bosom buddies. It doesn’t take long for King to bring Barbara’s brother Jerome back into the frame, and introduces a new character – John Ackerly, an ex-addict barkeep who may have something of a soft spot for Holly. As the story progresses, it quickly becomes clear that these aren’t parallel storylines at all, but that everything will come to a head in Buckeye City on a midsummer weekend: as McKay and Bessie prepare to take to the stage in the Mingo Auditorium on consecutive nights, the police and fire departments are preparing to engage in a friendly – sort of – charity baseball match, and Trig prepares his final act, finishing his series of murders in a single fell swoop that will rock the city – and maybe even the country – if he can just time everything right.
In his afterword to the book, King talks about how difficult a book Never Flinch was to write, but that doesn’t come across for the reader. This is an author who is having an absolute ball, playing in a toy box of his own creation with characters he obviously loves to spend time with. It feels like there is an element of self-challenge here: how many story strands can he introduce, keep control of, and wrap up nicely in a single, coherent novel? With over fifty years of practice, the result can never have been in doubt, but it’s fun to see him stretch his abilities and explore techniques and areas that he may never have used before. What really shines through as you read this latest novel is how much King enjoys spending time in this world, how much he enjoys writing Holly Gibney, a character who has come out of her shell over her six previous appearances and who now feels like a strange cross between Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple; a middle-aged woman who, despite her own lack of belief in herself, takes everything that life throws at her, and succeeds more often than not, with a little help from her friends.
As an aside: I recently embarked on a project to re-read King in chronological order, starting with Carrie. I have reached Cujo and found myself, at times, alterrnating between King-as-was and King-as-is. It’s an interesting contrast: his writing style has evolved in the forty-five years or so since Cujo hit the shelves, but it is still, unmistakably, Stephen King. He has spent the intervening years taking the elements of his earlier novels that work very well, and honing them to perfection – or a reasonable facsimile thereof – while ditching the things that didn’t work. This is a pattern that has repeated since those very early days. Every novel has something that doesn’t quite work; it disappears in the next novel, or returns in a changed format, while the things that work well show up time and time again. It’s something he still does, still trying to perfect his writing, fifty years later. This is King’s trademark storytelling voice; it’s unique and does what it’s supposed to do: it takes the reader by the hand and guides them through some very dark stories. Uncle Steve hasn’t let us go, or let us down, yet, and so we keep coming back for more. King’s voice has changed considerably in his fifty-plus-year career, but it’s still instantly recognisable and continues to adapt to the world around us, and to the environment around him, which is obviously a very different place now than when he was a man in his twenties. Cujo is a very different experience for me now, this being the first time I’ve read it as a parent, but it’s always comforting to know that Uncle Steve has got my back, and makes me wonder what I might find if I’m still around in twenty years and do another re-read.
Anyway…Never Flinch will, like its predecessor, Holly, be something of a divisive book for King fans. There are fans that will come down on either side of the abortion argument, or either side of the feminist argument, or, indeed, either side of the religion argument (which is something that King has explored many times in the past). There will also be readers who aren’t big fans of the Holly Gibney books, just as there are readers who have never delved into the world of Roland Deschain and his friends. But for those who enjoy the character, Never Flinch will be one to savour. Holly has come a long way from the young woman we first met in Mr Mercedes eleven years ago, and a visit to Buckeye City (isn’t it great that we now know where we’re going?) is always fun. Book #7 is no exception. It takes Holly out of her comfort zone (which, admittedly, isn’t difficult to do) and puts her in a position we probably never would have expected. It’s a book full of darkness and fury – for many different reasons – and a book full of evil, not in the supernatural sense, but in those small acts of horror perpetrated on people by their fellow humans. King doesn’t bring us any answers – there is no simple answer to reality – but as usual he makes us think, makes us ask ourselves uncomfortable questions – How would I react if…? What would I do in that situation? – and think about our answers. At the same time, he keeps us gripped in the story, perched on the edge of our seats as all of these strands come together, wondering how many of these friends we’ve made over the past decade will make it out alive. Because nothing’s ever certain in a Stephen King novel, just as nothing’s ever certain in real life, and reflecting that imperfect world back to us is what King does best.
