Stephen King
Background Dubbed, rightfully so, “THE KING...
By Susan Giles1431
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Morris Bellamy is a nobody, a petty criminal with little hope. But when he robs and murders the author of the Runners trilogy in 1978, he sets the wheels in motion for a confrontation that won’t happen for another 30 years.
Taking money and the author’s notebooks, Bellamy hides them in a trunk which he buries with hopes of reading the author’s true outcome to his trilogy. But eventually imprisoned for the crime, it will take another half a lifetime for him to reclaim his prize and finally discover an ending to story now obsessing him.
Young Peter Saubers has been helping his family survive with the money from an abandoned trunk he found buried behind his house. He’s sure that its owner has forgotten about it, the trunk looking ancient. But unaware of the danger he’s now facing, someone is about to come home, searching for a prize left hidden.
With a murderer desperate to find his haul, only one man can save a boy from the monster now stalking him, desperate to learn the ending to the story once and for all.
The second book in the Bill Hodges trilogy is a great continuation of a story but one I felt could have done with more from the original. The story is great, don’t get me wrong. It sits perfectly as a continuation to book 1, all of the familiar faces still present. But it falls short for me by not including more of the core story from book 1.
This story would have been better as a standalone novel; that’s how good I think it is. But it’s connection to the original arc isn’t enough for me to consider it a proper sequel.
Although there are smatterings of the original plot to continue into book 3, for me it just doesn’t grip me the way Bill and Brady did in the first.
Updated 3 years ago