Stephen King takes a break from the norm with detective novel Mr Mercedes, and we look at My Salinger Year, Joanna Rakoff’s account of answering JD Salinger’s fanmail
Mr Mercedes by Stephen King
Hardback by Hodder & Stoughton, £19.99 (ebook £7.47)
Stephen King delivers his unmistakable brand of suspense and intrigue in Mr Mercedes, a full-throttle page-turner, and his first ‘hard-boiled detective story’. Recently retired Detective Kermit William Hodges, Bill, is struggling to cope with a normal civilian life after devoting most of it to the police force. What’s even more depressing for him is retiring without catching the ruthless killer dubbed Mr Mercedes, who had ploughed into a group of people queuing for a job fair using a stolen Mercedes.
Killing eight people including a young mother and her baby, it was a crime that had eluded both the officers and the forensics team as it was carefully planned and executed leaving no trace of a clue or DNA. As Hodges contemplates his empty life while watching meaningless daytime TV and toying with his dad’s old revolver, a letter from the killer arrives, goading him as a failure and inviting him to talk about the crime and the suicidal feelings he may be harbouring on an anonymous social chat site called Under Debbie’s Blue Umbrella.
Rather than giving the twisted murderer any more satisfaction, he decides to continue investigating the case, unofficially, and uses the website to anger the killer hoping this will cause him to expose himself. What unfolds is an intense cat-and-mouse chase between the two men, both set on completing their goal of catching the other. Along the way, it’s clear that nothing and no-one is out of bounds.
Hodges is now also operating outside the law and when someone close to him suffers at the hands of Mr Mercedes, his determination to get justice means nothing will stand in his way, not even his former partner Pete who is still charged with the case and unaware of the deadly game his former colleague and friend is playing.
It’s a departure from the usual horror, supernatural and bloody gore of a Stephen King novel, but it had me hooked from page one.
The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
Hardback by Fourth Estate, £16.99 (ebook £7.63)
With his latest novel, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Hours once more demonstrates his psychological craftsmanship. In The Snow Queen, the ordinary lives of a few New Yorkers emerge from Cunningham’s pen with skillful ease. Barrett Meeks is forty-ish and yet again unlucky in love when, walking through Central Park, he catches sight of an eerie light in the sky; inexplicably meaningful to Barrett, he begins to question its significance while haltingly seeking his own. At home his brother, Tyler, nurses his dying wife-to-be and tries to compose their wedding song. As snowflakes fall outside, Tyler pursues the elusive magic of creativity in the snowy vials of cocaine that he keeps in his bedside cabinet. In their quests for purpose, the brothers meditate on life in all its perplexing, unexpected, cold impartiality, and seek glints of meaning amidst the smothering snow. A novel for dreamers, delivered in Cunningham’s beautiful, spare prose.
Blood Whispers by John Gordon Sinclair
Paperback by Faber & Faber, £12.99 (ebook £4.99)
Blood Whispers is the follow-up to Sinclair’s debut Seventy Times Seven and fans of this ‘fast and bloody’ style will no doubt be thrilled. Keira Lynch, successful lawyer to the down and outs of Glasgow, finds herself embroiled in the life of Kaltrina, a prostitute on the run from a ruthless Serbian gang leader. She is no stranger to unrequited violence, with the tale of her own background unravelling behind her, yet only seems to be getting herself deeper and deeper into a world of lies and corruption in the present. As the plot unfolds, she is left wondering who she can trust and, more importantly, who is watching her every move. This novel packs a certain punch and has a pace that keeps you guessing. A web of names, relating to gang members, police officers and CIA personnel, not to mention the protagonist’s past, does lead to a little overkill, but Sinclair has managed to muster enough intrigue to push readers through to the end of the book.
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
Hardback by Bloomsbury, £16.99 (ebook £14.99)
This is a book for book lovers; not just those who love stories, but those fascinated with peeking ‘behind the curtain’. A memoir spanning a year, it tells of Joanna’s life working in a prestigious literary agency in New York in the mid-1990s. Salinger was one of the agency’s biggest clients and, as the year goes on, Joanna begins to form a relationship with him and, more importantly, his fans. The volume of post sent for him is overwhelming, and there is a rote response that Joanna is meant to use. Yet the poignancy of these letters from fans, ranging from veterans to students, gets to Joanna, and she modifies her responses, acting as Salinger’s mouthpiece. Intertwined with this is the story of her personal life: her anti-establishment boyfriend, Don; living on a shoestring; friends getting married and moving away. It’s a magnificent portrait of a fascinating year; a pleasure to read.
Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys by Viv Albertine
Paperback by Faber & Faber, £14.99 (ebook £12.99)
Before Beyonce, before The Pretenders, before even Madonna, there was The Slits, an all-female punk band whose album Cut is still mentioned reverentially in cult music circles. Viv Albertine was the band’s imperious guitarist who went on to make a career as variously one of the UK’s first aerobics teachers, a film-maker and latterly actress and memoirist. This is not your usual rock memoir though. Although there is plenty of sex, drugs and guitars (shooting heroin with Johnny Thunders anyone?), her compelling narrative takes in her struggle to find love, the anguish of repeated cycles of IVF and trying to remain true to her artist-self while maintaining a normal family life. This is a visceral, emotional read and Albertine tells life like it is, in all its funny, maddening, bittersweet glory.