Book Review: Stephen King's 'Finders Keepers'

Book: Finders Keepers

Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Hachette India

Rs 474

Pages: 370

Can a reader be obsessed enough with a writer to kill him over a plot twist that he disliked? If this plot twist sounds unlikely, welcome to Finders Keepers, Stephen King's new thriller. To King's credit, he makes it sound believable and hides the murder motive long enough to keep you interested in the character.

The plot: a robber named Morris Bellamy breaks into his favourite author John Rothstein's house, kills him and steals his money (and manuscripts of two unpublished novels featuring Bellamy's favourite character). On returning to his hometown, the robber hides the notebooks and money in a trunk that he later buries under a tree in the woods. To unwind post that, he gets drunk and rapes a woman outside a bar. Consequently, he's arrested and jailed for a life term. Meanwhile, a teenager, Pete Sauber, discovers the trunk, takes the money, and being a tremendous Rothstein fan – the manuscripts too.

Years later, the money is spent, and only the manuscripts remain with Sauber. He tries to sell them to a dealer in rare books, who, as luck would have it, is Bellamy's friend. So when Bellamy learns that Sauber has the manuscripts – which now become the purpose of Bellamy's life – he goes on a bloody rampage to get them back. Will bright, likeable Pete Sauber and his family get through Bellamy's attack in one piece? What happens to Bellamy? And finally, why did he do what he did at all? In its attempts to answer these questions, the novel becomes a page-turner.

That a person with a middle-class milieu – 'well-raised' – can have criminal potential is explored convincingly and scarily. Morris Bellamy, the son of a writer, is a self-confessed American Lit scholar. He is also a robber, rapist and murderer of one of America's leading writers. Stephen King makes us ask: what led a 'well-brought-up' boy to commit the ultimate crime? Where did his upbringing go wrong? The answer, King suggests, doesn't lie in the upbringing, but Bellamy's heart. He is simply wired to be bad. King seems to hint – a nightmaric scenario for the Western Enlightenment – that no amount of exposure to beautiful ideas will change him.

This being a Stephen King novel, there's plenty of blood, gore and dropping bodies as Bellamy leaves a trail of deathly destruction in pursuit of his obsession.

The first part of the novel, dealing with the initial crime and its aftermath, is hence mainly situated in Bellamy's headspace. As for the second part, it introduces several other characters and alternates his viewpoint with theirs. Told through all their viewpoints, the theme's exposition had me gasping with dismay, horror and, yes, excitement, throughout the 370 pages.

The book may not be among King's best, but you'll read it to fulfill a fascination with Bellamy's character – one of King's best. With it, the author returns to one of his favourite themes: visiting and revisiting the worst that humanity can be. The worst, King tells us, is something within us, an animal perhaps, kept on a tight leash by the conscious mind, something yearning to snap those ties and break free... into a world of mayhem. That is the book's success.