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Sat, Nov 08, 2025 | Jumada al-Awwal 17, 1447 | Fajr 05:11 | DXB 
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Mr Mercedes: The un-generic thriller
Mr Mercedes by Stephen King may have a generic plot and even more archetypal characters, but that's precisely what makes this a surreal read
Stephen King is the unstoppable force to the immovable horror genre object. The way he crafts the ethereal, supernatural and extraterrestrial into life is rather unmatched, which is probably why he is able to take something as regular as an archetypal race-against-the-clock thriller and turn it into a nuanced deeply troubling adventure. Troubling, because Mr Mercedes is a lot closer to post-recession life than many of us are comfortable thinking out loud about.
Mr Mercedes starts out with quite a bang - actually, what would sound like several muffled thuds from the inside of a German engineered behemoth (an SL500) - with plenty of screams of terror and pandemonium. It's not like The Mist, although the Mercedes does emerge from a thick blanket of pre-dawn fog, and neither is the car being driven by some otherworldly creature. No. The villain here is Average Joe Somebody: Brady Hartsfield. Since this isn't a whodunit, you know exactly who and what the villain is like from the beginning. You know that he is what Alfred (played by the brilliant Sir Michael Caine) tells Bruce in The Dark Knight about the Joker: "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." Brady Hartsfield just wants to watch the world burn. The screaming arouses him, he says. He has some mommy issues of the Oedipus kind. But of course.
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Since the villain is generic, the protagonist fits right in. Meet Det-Ret (he still has all his police badges from his time as a city cop) Bill Hodges, the retired detective who didn't manage to catch the Mercedes Killer from all those years ago. The only case that haunts him. The only case that keeps him contemplating ending it all with his deceased father's old Glock, in his Spartan living room. It's what Brady wants. After all, it would the icing on the cake - driving the detective to suicide over the tragedy that was left unsolved. But Hodges isn't ready yet, and the push, or the pull, depending on how you want to see it, comes in the form of a letter from the 'Mercedes Killer', Brady, himself, which sets off this rollercoaster, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cat and mouse adventure, or fish and fisherman (the analogy that Stephen King uses) game that just races to the finish.
King isn't shy about filling all the other gaps with archetypes either. The story is that well-written. In fact, you almost get a sense he's mocking the whole thriller genre as he mows down passage after passage in Mr Mercedes. There's the token black guy, Jerome, who cheek-in-jowly mocks his own presence as a mere cho boi (chore boy); the white suburban, hot, newly-divorced sister of a victim from the Mercedes Killer case investigations who, of course, totally gets involved with Det-Ret Hodges; and there's even a mentally unstable cousin that makes an appearance to save the day. All of these characters are prancing about in a realistic portrayal of a generic post-recession small town, USA.
Which is why Mr Mercedes is so much more than just a thriller. (Even mowing all those people down in a Mercedes is an ironic metaphor for the rich mowing down the poor and unemployed. Genius.) The characters are generic and the plot is something you have read and seen in the movies several times. Who cares? It's so well-written you can't put it down. And that's King's gift. A gift that hopefully keeps on giving.
Mr Mercedes
Stephen King
> 405 pages
> Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
> Available at Jashanmal
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