About the Book
1978:
Morris Bellamy is a reader so obsessed by America’s iconic author John Rothstein that he is prepared to kill for a trove of notebooks containing at least one more unpublished novel.
2009:
Pete Saubers, a boy whose father was brutally injured by a stolen Mercedes, discovers a buried trunk containing cash and Rothstein’s notebooks.
2014:
After thirty-five years in prison, Morris is up for parole. And he’s hell-bent on recovering his treasure.
Now it’s up to retired detective Bill Hodges – running an investigative company called ‘Finders Keepers’ – to rescue Pete from an ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris…
My Review
When I read Mr Mercedes earlier this year I found it very difficult to put down. Finders Keepers was a little different. I did enjoy it, but the story leading up to ‘modern day’ was a little slow. Bellamy isn’t a nice person, a passionate reader who takes offence when an author doesn’t treat the character he created with the respect that he felt he deserved. He does a long sentence in prison, for unrelated crimes but the account of his time there didn’t really appeal to me.
However, when Hodges and his friends Jerome and Holly appeared I enjoyed it more. After all, who couldn’t like Holly, she is a fantastic character. I felt very sorry for Pete. His family was torn apart by Brady who appears in some very creepy scenes in this novel even though they are only brief. He decides to help them with the cash he finds but in doing so he places them all in danger. Not only from Bellamy but also the book dealer who is another nasty individual.
It could be read as a stand-alone but to get the best out of it you really need to have read Mr Mercedes. Only a few characters are in both but parts of the storyline are linked. I already have End of Watch, the final part of the trilogy on my bookshelf and I plan on reading very soon.
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