Mr Mercedes - the Verdict

I am not going to lie... when it comes to la King, I am one grossly biased fan-boy. I was very excited by the release of his latest offering, and although different to what many people might be expecting it is one solid, psychological, tense, character-driven motherfucker.

This time around, King has gone for the pure modern day crime thriller, sharing a genre with the likes of Thomas Harris and James Ellroy. If this was the aim, he succeeds hands down.

As with all of King's work, it is the characters which rule the plot. The main protagonist, a retired police detective, is drawn with a practise hand, and Mr Mercedes himself is a classic study of sexual dysfunction with a psychopathic mommy issue. I suppose there is nothing very new or imaginative in the themes that King uses here. There is no supernatural sub-plot of any kind, and readers wanting their dose of horror will be disappointed.

As all Stephen King aficionados know, you read one of his books because you want to care about the characters. Either way. Love or hate. You want the heroes to win because of the struggles they have endured. You want to understand what is going on inside the mind of the monsters, and you want to feel sad when a character you like ends up biting the proverbial bullet.

There are a lot of so-called brilliant writers who never achieve this, and it is a prejudice I encounter when I try to explain to folk why I read Stephen King. Just because he has been pigeon-holed as a schlock-horror writer does not mean he is not a great writer as well.

So, if you like Stephen King, read Mr Mercedes.
If you like thrillers and crime novels, read Mr Mercedes.
But above all, if you love reading novels that are crafted with care, emotion and brilliance, read Mr Mercedes.

Mr Mercedes - nearly there!

The penultimate video (I think), before we hear from Mr Mercedes himself.
This time it's Annie Wilkes from Misery. 
I can't actually wait now.
I keep turning on the WiFi on my Kindle hoping it will magically appear.



Mr Mercedes introduced by Annie from MISERY from Hodder & Stoughton on Vimeo.

Mr Mercedes - How much more can I take?

Only two days to go.
They have just released the fourth video introduction to Brady(?)
This is from Andy, from Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.



Mr Mercedes introduced by Andy from RITA HAYWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION from Hodder & Stoughton on Vimeo.

Mr Mercedes - Getting even more excited!

Here is the latest from the Mr Mercedes trailer vignettes.
It's Pennywise the Clown, the villain from IT!



Mr Mercedes introduced by Pennywise from IT from Hodder & Stoughton on Vimeo.

Mr Mercedes - Getting Excited!

I just remembered that Stephen King's new book is out on Tuesday. I have already come out as a huge fan-boy, so it will come as no surprise that I am a bit excited.
If only I could shut myself in for a day and ready it through. I supposed I shall have to go to work though, and read it on the train.
His publicists have released this 'trailers', with more to come over the nest few days. Blatant advertising I know, but they are pretty cool. They are 'read' by characters from some of his novels.
What do you think?


Mr Mercedes introduced by Danny from The Shining from Hodder & Stoughton on Vimeo.


Mr Mercedes introduced by Carrie from Hodder & Stoughton on Vimeo.

Joyland - Another Stephen King Triumph

I only just got around to reading this. This is very late for me; I normally jump on the latest Stephen King within hours of publication. I actually think it was the cover that put me off. I am by no means saying that I am one of those people that thinks King is all about the horror, and can't bare it when he starts raving about baseball.
Far from it.
Stephen King is all about the writing, and Joyland is yet another magnificent piece of work. With themes of serial murder and prescience, it is a coming-of-age tale set in an entirely believable world of  the Joyland Funfair in North Carolina. Littered with carny-talk, the character led story is impossible to put down. The suspense gradually climbs; from the tumult of new love and break up, through the shivers of a ghost-story, to a classical climactic ending, worthy of Hitchcock.
I am clearly biased. I am a huge SK fanboy. But this is one of the best.
Read it now!

The Science Delusion

After stumbling around the web (as we all do) for perhaps too long, I came across a post regarding talks that TED had self-censored! Yes, I think if any sentence deserves an exclamation mark it is that one. Without knowing a lot about the TED organization, I had always enjoyed watching the remarkable and innovative lectures, and assumed that the ethos of TED must be one of open-mindedness and inclusion. And yet, this video had been retrospectively removed form the general TED feed:

Apart from the fact that this has sparked incredible levels of debate and outrage, the content of Professor Rupert Sheldrake’s is intriguing to say the least. He argues that Science has become bogged down with dogma, closed-mindedness and a fundamentalism which is akin to a religious belief. He had, of course, written a book on the subject. His examples sparked my curiosity, and a flitted over to Amazon and was reading his tome within minutes.

The Science Delusion (or Science Set Free in the US) expounds on Sheldrake’s idea that Science has been stifled by the belief that we already know how the Universe works. He goes through ten main tenets of modern Science, breaking them down step-by-step with convincing arguments based on published papers and testable hypotheses.

Here is a small example. In one chapter, Sheldrake challenges the idea that so-called Universal Constant always have the same value. Indeed, it turns out that between 1928 and 1945 the measured values of the speed of light (‘c’) were lower than they should be by 20 kilometres per second. Some scientist speculated that the ‘constant’ may be fluctuating, but the consensus was that such occurrences were done to ‘intellectual phase locking’. In 1972 the embarrassment of this episode was expunged as the value of ‘c’ was fixed by definition. In 1983, the standard unit of length, the metre, was redefined in terms of the speed of light. So, if any fluctuations of ‘c’ were occurring, it is now impossible to detect as the length of the metre would also change!

Sheldrake has theories which are far more outré and are classed as parapsychology. However, I challenge you to read this book. If you find yourself offended by the ideas he is putting forward, then perhaps you hold a belief regarding how Science, and the Universe, works.

And I would ask you, “Shouldn’t science be free of the dogma of belief?”