Mr. Mercedes: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “A trimmer than usual King, but that doesn’t mean he skimps on the suspense and spine-tingling chills.”

  — People magazine

• “King deftly takes elements of hard-boiled mysteries and puts a fresh spin on them.”

  — USA Today

• “Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes pits two malcontented men with nowhere lives who are both determined to regenerate themselves—but in radically different ways.”

  — Barnes&Noble.com, editorial review

• “A fast-paced whodunit.”

  — Esquire

• “Pays off exuberantly…Surprising and invigorating.”

  — New York Times

• “Classic Stephen King. Creepy, yet realistic characters that get under your skin and stay there, a compelling story that twists and turns at breakneck speed, and delightful prose that, once again, proves that one of America’s greatest natural storytellers is also one of its finest writers.”

  — Associated Press

• “King is clearly having fun, and so are we…For the first half of the novel, King tickles our anxieties, his detective engaging in a classic cat-and-mouse game with the killer. But you can feel him wriggling against the hard-boiled tradition, shaking the hinges. Soon enough, in ways large and small, he rejects and replaces the genre’s creakiest devices… Mr. Mercedes is a universe both ruled by a playful, occasionally cruel god and populated by characters all of whom have their reasons. One man can do only so much.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “On one level, Mr. Mercedes is an expertly crafted example of the classic race-against-the-clock thriller. On another, it is a novel of depth and character enriched throughout by the grace notes King provides in such seemingly effortless profusion. It is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses.”

  — Washington Post

• “Hartfield is sensitive, sympathetic, and one of King’s most realistic characters. He is a lot like Norman Bates from Psycho, in the worst ways imaginable. You can add Hartfield to the list of great King villains, alongside the shape-shifting monster Pennywise from It and the hypnotic vampire Kurt Barlow from Salem’s Lot.”

  — Boston Herald

• “A taut, calibrated thriller…The majority of the book is merciless and unforgiving, and the scariest thing about it is how plausible the whole scenario is.”

  — Miami Herald

• “Think of Mr. Mercedes as an AC/DC song: uncluttered, chugging with momentum, and a lot harder to pull off than it looks….King has written a hot rod of a novel, perfect for a few summer days at the pool. Mercedes-Benz commands drivers to demand ‘the best or nothing.’ In pop-fiction terms, that motto still applies to Stephen King, too. With apologies to AC/DC, the highway to hell never felt so fun.”

  — Christian Science Monitor

• “In this suspenseful crime thriller from megaseller King, ex-detective Bill Hodges is settling badly into his retirement. Then he receives a taunting letter from someone who claims to be the Mercedes Killer—the media’s name for the hit-and-run driver who, a year earlier, deliberately plowed a stolen car into a crowd at a job fair, killing eight and maiming fifteen…King excels in his disturbing portrait of Brady, a genuine monster in ordinary human form who gives new meaning to the phrase ‘the banality of evil.’”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “King returns to the theme of the scary car—except this one has a scary driver who’s as loony but logical unto himself as old Jack Torrance from The Shining…Nicely dark, never predictable, and altogether entertaining.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “Narrator Will Patton adds tension and a cinematic interpretation to this high-stakes race against time, featuring some of Stephen King’s most memorable characters in his first attempt at the hard-boiled detective genre. Patton takes long, dramatic pauses to heighten the suspense and allow the fear to play in the mind’s eye of the listener. King continues to document the horrors of everyday American life, and Patton brings those terrors to life as few narrators can. Here’s a ‘can’t miss’ story in the best format available, the movie between your ears. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”

  — AudioFile