A new millionaire walks into a bar: Stephen King’s “Holly”.

Just read me a new novel by Stephen King! And now I have finished it! It is titled “Holly”.

A woman named Penny Dahl makes a call to the Finders Keepers detective agency in the hope that they will help her find her daughter who has gone missing. But Holly, one of the detectives, is reluctant to take up the case. Here partner has contracted Covid, and her mother had recently passed away. But there is something in the desperate tone voice of Penny that makes the idea of turning her down impossible.

Just blocks away from where Bonnie Dahl, the daughter, vanished live an elderly couple, and professors, by the name of Rodney and Emily Harris. The two are the absolute pinnacle of bourgeois respectability. Married and devoted to each other and also semiretired lifelong academics. But there is a dark and morbid secret that they are keeping in the basement of their tidy and booklined home. One that is related to Bonnie’s disappearance. One that will prove difficult to uncover, for the old couple are savvy, patient and ruthless.

So it’s going to take all of Holly’s talents to outwit and outmaneuver the insane professors.

This is a pretty good horror/mystery novel from King. Holly Gibney, as many King fans know, is a character from King’s Mr. Mercedes trilogy, a series that I so want to read! I think this trilogy has a more supernatural element to it, while with this is more grounded. King also adds elements from the most recent real world events, which many authors often times do, to the mix. Slow but overall a pretty good book.

And I so desperately need to read the Mr. Mercedes trilogy! I really, really do!

by i-the-muso-1968