Holly (2023)

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Since her debut in 2014 Holly Gibney has become Stephen King’s most prolific character since The Dark Tower’s gunslinging Roland Deschain, appearing as a minor character in King’s Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) before evolving throughout the events of both The Outsider (2018) and If It Bleeds (2020). On the spectrum and painfully shy, watching King develop Holly into such an interesting hero has been one of his most satisfying literary accomplishments in some time.

That said, it’s remarkable how effectively Holly (the book) functions as its own story, and can be read independently from the other novels (and novella). King may have began his Mercedes series as a nod to sausage-factory noir like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch (who gets a shout out here) and countless others, but it wasn’t long before the adventures of Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney would include the macabre and supernatural threats, albeit on a more grounded and believable level.

Once again King divides his narrative between two intertwining arcs that come off like the bastard child of Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The painfully shy Holly Gibney must track down a pair of serial killing cannibals before they kidnap and consume their next victim, no small feat given her social discomforts and sudden isolation caused by the arrival of another evil, a world-closing pandemic.

Rodney and Emily Harris, retired professors from Bell College of Arts and Sciences in their late 80s and harboring a deadly secret: they’re cannibals who theorize consuming human flesh holds off the aging process, or so they think. Clinical, yet academically astute, both are terrifying new creations from the man who brought us Pennywise and Randall Flagg. The human body contains 126,000 calories (2,600 in the liver alone), Rodney describes, a natural cure-all for almost every sickness when turned into a surprising variety of steaks, shakes, and desserts.

Deathly sick and often wheelchair bound, King has enfeebled his murderous academics to such a degree half the “fun” (if you can call it that) is seeing how they manage to pull off their crimes without getting caught, or breaking a hip. Given the rest of the story, though, it’s curious how these octogenarian people-eaters seem more concerned with alleviating the pains of arthritis than preventing Covid.

Finders Keepers, the detective agency formed after the events of Mr. Mercedes, is temporarily closed while Holly grieves the loss of her estranged mother to Covid and her partner, Pete Huntley, is stricken with the virus. But a desperate plea from Penny Dahl, a panicked mother whose daughter has been missing for weeks and has heard little from the police, jolts her back into action. Holly agrees to help (she’d never let someone in need go without), but with friend and part-time investigator Jerome Robinson away in New York to finalize a career in publishing, she’ll need assistance from his sister Barbara, a budding writer herself, more than ever.

As Holly investigates a pattern begins to emerge: several people, both past and present, appear to have gone missing around the neighborhood near Bell College. As readers we already know who the killers are, following them as they carry out their psychotic actions while Holly inches closer and closer to learning the horrifying truth.

The events of Holly take place during the Covid-19 pandemic, inescapable given its 2021 timeline. Characters greet each other with declarations of their vaccination status (Pfizer or Moderna?), booster shots, and the risks of masking/unmasking. King uses the forced isolation of Covid to focus less on the nastiness of the cannibal killers and more on developing his heroine, Holly Gibney, who’s blossomed from Bill Hodges protegee into a genuinely great detective.

Holly has always been a character that not only internalizes her inner thoughts and emotions but rationalizes them in practice as she’s faced terrorists, telekinetic killers, and mythical beasts. It’s a process that’s kept her alive through some dire situations, self-referencing her optimism as “Holly hope”. When frustrated she might call something bullpoop or poopy, her only vice is that still smokes when nervous, even during Covid. Nobody’s perfect.

Holly’s relationship with Bill Hodges was always the heart and soul of their previous adventures, and that spirit continues here, despite the character succumbing to cancer. So much of Holly’s determination is motivated by wanting to live up to her mentor’s standard, wanting to make him proud of what she’s accomplished not just as a private investigator but as a human being. King finds touching ways to keep Holly’s love for Bill alive without sacrificing her autonomy, including a Chekhovian moment near the finale so telegraphed yet satisfying you want to cheer when it happens.

Unfortunately, peppered throughout are awkward attempts at political commentary that come across more like a litany of ideological grudges. A main character’s family member is sacrificed to Covid, rendered a delusional Trump supporting, anti-vaccination bigot. Comments on policing and lack of interest in locating missing persons, especially in the black community, feel topical but out of place here. Most bizarre is how King chooses to make his villains even more sinister; it’s not enough Professor Emily Harris be a brain-slurping cannibal, but also a racist homophobe as well. I’m not sure we’re supposed to believe the former is worse than the latter.

If anything, these oversimplifications make an otherwise engaging character study feel shallower and less surefooted. Hearing the same admonishments over vaccinations and racial statistics for the umpteenth time is exhausting. Anyone familiar with King’s social media posts won’t find this surprising (the literary King is far more reserved than his Twitter counterpart, however) but it’s disappointing to see him come across so…undisciplined.

Despite lapses into soapboxing, Holly is an enjoyable entry in Stephen King’s ever-expanding post-Mr. Mercedes world of Holly Gibney, one that feels solidly connected to the stories that came before yet can be enjoyed independently. King’s unmatched gifts for world-building and characterizations elevate what could have been another disposable serial killer thriller. Who else could demote elderly cannibals to the B-plot and still manage to keep things interesting?