Achi news desk-
Holly is Stephen King’s latest novel which revolves around retired teachers Emily and Rodney Harris, who live in a row of expensive Victorian houses and look normal, but actually have a cage in their basement and are n racist cannibals who are serial killers. The victims are all different from each other, which highlights the predator’s method of using a wheelchair to feign desperation and lure the suspects, then sedate them with Valium. This is one of the many clues that bring them to Holly Gibney’s attention.
Private investigator Holly Gibney, struggling with her mother’s recent death from COVID and with mixed feelings about becoming a sudden millionaire as a result, is tasked with finding out who is killing all these individuals who appear as if they were ‘disappearing’ from the face of the earth. Holly is kind, conscientious, punctual to a fault, loyal and resourceful. She is put on the suitcase by the over-emotional mother of a missing girl and so the novel unwinds backwards and forwards in time, leading us through the lives, thoughts and feelings of all its characters. Stephen King describes in detail how the victims are targeted, caged and given raw liver to eat, and then slowly have to wait for death before they are killed by the teachers – leading to a subtle analysis of the thought process of the teachers and their victims alike. Stephen King seems to like poetry as I do, which made the book even more interesting to me: there is a poetry award mentioned in the book that one of the characters Barbara receives. Even the murderers are sprouting Shakespeare – the irony!
It seems that COVID has affected Stephen King’s thought process, as Holly is extremely diligent about wearing a mask, and smart about using hand sanitisers every time she steps into a public space. An entire narrative questions whether or not people should be vaccinated – and Stephen King, being logical, is clearly on the side of those who vaccinate. There is talk of the death toll of COVID and hospital wards overflowing with patients. Holly’s own mother was not hit and died an untimely death and her partner in the detective agency Finders Keepers has COVID throughout the case.
Stephen King has shown that although he believes that pure evil exists, in his opinion, good ultimately triumphs over it.
The Harris’s have murdered Jorge Castro in 2012, Cary Dressler in 2015, Ellen Craslow and Peter Steinmen in 2018 and finally Bonnie Dahl in 2021. All murders were three years apart, give or take, except for Ellen and Peter. Professor Rodney Harris is known as Mr Meat at the university because of his focus on meat which is so important to the diet and this is another clue that leads Holly to the Harris’s, but what she I find it extreme. She expects murder or sexual predators, not cannibalism and a cage for victims. Penny Dahl, Bonnie Dahl’s mother, is shown to have a problematic relationship with her daughter, much like Holly’s with her mother, who recruits Holly to the case and keeps pushing her forward.
In the showdown between the old teachers and Holly, she kills them both inside her cell, strangling both of their throats and the fight scenes that Stephen King writes are so compelling they keep you turning the page to see if Holly has survived or not. In the end, she does, and she is also found by her friend Barbara who cracks the case on her own and visits the Harris house to look for Holly as she has gone missing. Penny Dahl is worried when Holly doesn’t call her on time and rings the alarm bells thinking, quite rightly, that she might have been kidnapped too. Penny is the first person Barbara calls – from the hospital full of reporters – when Holly escapes. A horrible book with a happy ending, is still an excellent book, I’d say.
The novel is slow in the beginning but fun, the narrative a bit lazy and boring towards the middle, so much so that I was almost about to put it down, but then suddenly right towards the middle the pace picked up telling stories and it became so thrilling that I wanted to know the ending and the rather long book was completed in one night. Together, Holly is a great read, exceptionally well written and well put together. Stephen King has proven again that there is a reason he is a master of storytelling and has churned out over 70 books during his lifetime. When it comes to the battle between good and evil, evil will always exist and good will always be there to fight against it. As one of the policewomen Izzy says towards the end, “Just when you think you’ve seen the worst that humans have to offer, you find out you’re wrong .” However, by keeping Holly alive and giving her a high status towards the end, Stephen King has shown that although he believes that pure evil exists, in his opinion, good ultimately triumphs over it. . I hope most people agree.
