55 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingMr. Mercedes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Stephen King and the Hard-Boiled Detective Story
King’s work spans many genres, and Mr. Mercedes is his first work of “hard-boiled” detective fiction, which features a down-and-out detective loner protagonist who has had a tough life and needs to get back his sense of self through solving a crime. The detective, Bill Hodges, became the main character in a trilogy that includes Finders Keepers (2015) and End of Watch (2016). A spin-off novel The Outsider (2018), features Holly Gibney, a character who aids Hodges in Mr. Mercedes. The Outsider is more a traditional detective story that also contains supernatural elements. To date, King has written three books for the Hard Case Crime imprint, which specializes in hard-boiled fiction: The Colorado Kid (2005), Joyland (2013), and Later (2021). These books blend traditional hard-boiled detective and mystery tropes with supernatural elements.
The hard-boiled crime genre focuses on human corruption rather than grand themes of good and evil. That, in itself, is something of a departure for King, who often pits protagonists against evil on a cosmic scale. However, even in his stories of cosmic evil, King always exposes the dark side of human nature. Brady Hartsfield, the killer in Mr. Mercedes, represents a number of deviant immoral traits that make him a social menace who must be stopped. Rather than Brady’s deviance being caused by supernatural forces, it is the product of a twisted upbringing and a pathologized psyche.
The hard-boiled detective story relies on a realistic view of the world that most readers will recognize and understand. The stories usually take place in an urban setting, which isolates the protagonist in a humanmade world, where he has no escape from both the good and bad sides of human nature. The mood is often grim with setting and theme elements of noir, such as darkness, dim lighting, psychological distress, and existential crises. One of the main themes of Mr. Mercedes is urban economic decline, and the socioeconomic symbolism of a luxury car plowing into a crowd of jobless people is very intentional. By contrast, King’s supernatural stories take place in a world that is partly or even mainly realistic but contains demonic, supernatural, or otherwise unexplainable elements. These stories may or may not have overtones of social commentary. The root of the fear in this type of horror is that destructive supernatural elements intrude on the everyday world, and the characters are all but powerless to stop them. Mr. Mercedes is a departure from King’s typical work—even some of his other detective stories—because it contains not even a hint of the supernatural.
Language plays an important role in the tone of the hard-boiled genre. King’s direct, concrete, and often slangy voice invokes one of the most distinctive characteristics of the hard-boiled genre: The no-nonsense language of the detective protagonist. It can express a surprising amount of poetry that stems from the protagonist’s core idealism bumping up against his understanding of human nature. King’s poetic language also comes out in some of his other hard-boiled stories, most notably Later and Joyland. This genre’s use of language includes brisk, witty dialogue, replete with sexual innuendo between the hard-boiled detective and the female lead, who is either a lady in distress or a femme fatale (sometimes both). In Mr. Mercedes, Hodges sometimes engages in such playful banter with his co-investigator and love interest, Janey Patterson.
Mr. Mercedes takes the form of a “howcatchem” rather than a “whodunnit plot.” In the whodunnit, the reader follows the twists and turns of the investigation, trying to figure out the crime alongside the detective. Typical examples are stories of classic detectives, such as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. In the howcatchem, the reader knows the identity of the criminal almost from the start. The tension of the story arises from wondering how and when the detective will close in. The American television series Colombo is a popular example. In Mr. Mercedes, the reader is privy to all of Brady’s sinister plans, and the suspense comes from wondering how the protagonists will evade Brady’s plots and eventually catch him.
Genre Context: Character Tropes in Mr. Mercedes
The hard-boiled genre relies on recognizable character tropes to guide readers through the plot and reinforce the genre’s themes. The most important character is the hard-boiled detective. He is usually a cynical loner (he needn’t be retired), but he has a heart of gold and a desire to see justice done, especially if there is a lady in distress. The detective may have an estranged family or substance use disorders, which represent his loneliness in the world. The detective is usually male, and his love interest is either the lady in distress or a femme fatale, i.e., a dangerous woman. The love plot may work out, but often it is ill-fated, which is part of the genre’s commentary on people’s inherent loneliness and inability to understand one another.
The detective protagonist often has a sidekick or a team of individuals who aid in the investigations. In Mr. Mercedes, Hodges has Jerome, a tech-savvy teenager; the wealthy and beautiful Janey, who becomes his love interest; and Janey’s middle-aged cousin, Holly, who is nervous and psychologically fragile. These characters each contain unique personality quirks as well as more standard genre attributes. Jerome is bound for the Ivy League, but he has an alter-ego he calls “Tyrone Feelgood Deelite,” which is a satire on an exaggerated Black stereotype. Contemporary readers may find this portrayal uncomfortable as Jerome often uses racial slurs and parodies minstrel speech. Hodges finds this side of Jerome uncomfortable as well, and when they leave to work on the case, Hodges tells him to “leave Tyrone Feelgood Deelite at home” (117).
King has been cited for writing problematic Black characters. Science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu describes King’s penchant for writing “magical Negroes,” (i.e., Black characters with special abilities who sacrifice themselves for the white protagonist) in works such as The Green Mile, The Stand, The Shining, and others (“Stephen King’s Super-Duper Magical Negroes,” Strange Horizons, 25 Oct. 2014). It is arguable whether Jerome fits this stereotype or whether King is satirizing the fact that Jerome, an Ivy League-bound tech whiz, could be treated as a racial stereotype because of his skin color.
The wealthy, beautiful Janey fits the role of the traditional love interest of the genre and is perhaps too eager to begin a sexual relationship with Hodges. Holly, who becomes a key character, is described as a “spinster” (265) with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and associated anxiety. Some readers may find King’s portrayal of Holly problematic in that she is at first defined by her nervous tics, but she is a full-fledged character and a notable nongenre-specific addition to the novel’s cast.
The final character trope in the hard-boiled detective genre is the antagonist, who is usually a killer. Like the detective, the killer is cynical about humanity and may even have an ideology about how to make society better. However, killer’s strategies are always destructive and violent. The killer may have grand or personal motives; in this case, Brady Hartsfield is characterized as a psychopath with an amalgam of other deviant anti-social traits, including strong anti-Black racism. Some readers may find King’s portrayal of Brady problematic because it relies on stereotypes of mental illness and presents over-the-top racist views. Brady’s true motive is never discovered, but this too fits with the genre’s theme of the world being a fundamentally dark, violent place.
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