 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to Thursday Theorist. Today we are talking about the Bill Hodges trilogy, starting with Mr. Mercedes. All right, first and foremost, everybody who watches these, who hasn't read all of Stephen King's books, there will be spoilers for everything. So just if you have not read all of Stephen King's books, expect that I'm going to spoil things throughout this video. Even more so than any other time. I'm going to be talking everything from Carrie all the way up to the newest one, the outsider. So if you don't, if you don't want spoilers, please click away and do not watch this. Don't be down there in the comments section. Oh my gosh, spoilers. Okay. So right off the bat, Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King decided he had done everything else. So why not try a thriller novel? Then why not try a thriller series using the same retired detective Bill Deight Rhett, William, to think Jay, no, Kermit, William Kermit Hodges. So William K Hodges or Bill Hodges as we come to know him. This first book, I gave five stars. It was so much fun. I had never read anything like it from King before. He had tried mysteries and thrillers like Omni's Last Case and I don't know about Colorado Kid, that kind of thing. He tried Noir with Joyland and I don't think he ever really hit the mark. Joyland is a terrific book, but it didn't need to be a hard case crime. I don't think. But this is finally a legitimate thriller in the likes of let's say like Harlan Corbin, what are the heck his name is, that kind of thing. With this one, he almost recreated his archetype villain, the sexually abused, screwed up home life that was Brady Hartfield's relationship with his mother and the traumatic past of what happened with his little brother. Not really the reveal, but I guess the twist and what happens to Brady's mom, that part actually, it kind of upset me. I understand how nasty and terrible she was, but I mean his life was already terrible. I mean he already has these villainous thoughts and everything and it's just something about that. It was a bit of schrodenfreude or whatever, however you want to pronounce it. That mixed with actual like holy shit, this is actually kind of sad and I think King does that very well, makes his villains sympathetic and makes you feel for them even if they are a complete and utter monster like Brady Hartfield. Here's something, now going into how it ties into the Dark Tower universe, and I'm going to go ahead and throw it in since this book, Finders Keepers and End of Watch all exist in the same universe, I'm going to throw out my theory and then I'm going to throw out a fan theory from John Greenleaf, I think your name is, that helps out with my theory. So my theory is that this is just another turn of the wheel, this is another spoke on the wheel, whatever you want to call it, because in this book Pennywise is mentioned, well it is mentioned, the movie version of it, the movie version of Christine is also mentioned. There are some other nods to things, I think I was reading over my review and I'm not sure exactly what I was talking about, but I said there was, there might even be a nod to Creek Show in here, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was. Now if you fast forward all the way ahead to the outsider, that puts this into the Dark Tower universe because of, we'll get to that in the outsider video, but the end of the outsider roots this entire series into the Dark Tower universe. Now another way that you can put it here, and I really, really like this theory, John Greenleaf in the comments section of one of my videos, John, hopefully you're watching this, please put it, say hello down there in the comments, he says technically everything Stephen King writes is Dark Tower related because Stephen King wrote himself into the Dark Tower. It's something I've never thought of, even we're on like episode 32 right now, it never even crossed my mind that you can literally tie in anything he writes just because he wrote himself into the novel. He wrote himself into the song of Susanna and I get the entire Dark Tower series as it is. I love that theory and John Greenleaf, you get all the credit for it, so please say hello everybody, thank John down there. Now as far as another soft tie-in to the King universe as a whole, there is something in King's universe where if there's some kind of trauma, whether it be emotional or physical, that ends up giving people psychic abilities. So Brady starts off with nothing, he starts off as your regular psychopath, and then by the end of the book, well by the end of the series, he ends up with the psychic ability to be able to move things, to be able to control people, that kind of thing. That is like I think the one of the only big complaints I hear from people is that he was fine while he was writing regular thriller stuff, but once he started being Stephen King, which is that that tickles me, I mean that's funny, but once he started doing Stephen King type stuff in the books, that's when people got upset and turned on him because they didn't feel that Brady needed the powers. I think it was great, I think it was a way that King was able to make the series his own instead of just making them all the other thriller fluff that's out there. So that's Mr. Mercedes, love this one, gave it five stars. Next we are doing Finders Keepers. Now this one has some loose tie-ins also, you can say that the, what's the main guy's name? Jimmy Gold or is it Morris Bellamy? I think it's Morris Bellamy. The main bad guy, this one, I didn't care too much for this book. I did enjoy the first like 150 pages of this one because I like Hodges not being there. I know that sounds funny, but I didn't like Hodges in the first book much. I loved Holly and in this one I like Holly again, but as soon as Hodges popped on screen or on page, whatever, as soon as he came back into the story, I started disliking the book. And a soft tie-in here is that there's a theory that Morris Bellamy is a twin of Annie Wilkes because you have the same, it's almost the same exact ending as misery. So you have the book on fire, all that stuff, and people have said that that ties that into the dark tower. I don't know because the only thing that really ties misery into the dark tower is one line that says it wasn't too far off the beam or something like that. So I don't think it's a hard connect, but there is a hard connect once again with this one and going back to the outsider and we'll talk about that in the outsider. I'm not talking about it now, but there is now finally a hard connect between all these books, these three books. Now the, like I said, the novel is never as good for me as it is in those first 150 pages and it kind of reminds me of the dead zone in that aspect where it starts off great and then it just progressively gets worse and worse and worse and I just stopped caring. So that's Finder's Keepers. Last but not least, sorry y'all, it is hot here in Alabama. I'm sweating up a storm. We have the final book in the Hodges trilogy, End of Watch. I've heard some people complain about the outsider because it spoils the fact that Bill Hodges dies and I do warn of spoilers for the entire series in my outsider review, but I mean literally called End of Watch. If you know anything about police procedure or police period, End of Watch is when a cop dies. I mean that's, there you go. This one, I feel the same way about this one as I do about Finder's Keepers. It is never as good until, well actually it's the exact opposite. I'll change that. It gets progressively better and the ending is the best ending of the series I feel. But again it started off so slow and so boring. I only gave it four stars. So it was dead at the beginning, unlike Finder's Keepers, which was speedy at the beginning, dead at the end. This one was dead at the beginning, speedy at the end. Now I give the entire series as a whole, kind of like The Dark Tower. I give the entire series as a whole five stars because by the end of this I actually felt for Hodges and I cried at the end that he was dead. But the reason why I felt so bad is because I felt bad for Holly. And if Holly had not been in these three books, I probably wouldn't have liked them at all. I would have gave them far lower on the run. Probably two to three stars. But because I'm a bit like Holly, if you guys could tell, I have theories about everything. I liked it more with her in it and that's one of the things that shine for me in The Outsider. But we'll get to that when we get to The Outsider. So we have two more videos for novels to do. We have Sleeping Beauties and then we have The Outsider. Those two will be done for the novels and then I'm going to take a week off before I come back with Hearts and Atlantis and then I do some other stuff just to tie up loose ends like The Colorado Kid and then I'm going to do the novella collections, well the short stories first and the novella collections and the Bachman books and then all the way at the end I will, we're going to be doing a reread of The Dark Tower starting probably next month, July or August, something like that. I'm not sure. And if you want to join that just let me know down there in the comments of this video, any video and I'll making a list, a tally. If you've already told me don't have to tell me again. So have you have any tie-ins for The Dark Tower or the King Burst that I missed myself? Leave them down in the comments section. Sorry, leave them down there in the comments section. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U. This has been another Thursday Theorist Review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!