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.
Further Reading & Resources
Further Reading: Fiction/Genre
King has written several hard-boiled detective novels, some of which are realistic and some that contain supernatural elements.
- The Mr. Mercedes series (2015) King considers his first hard-boiled detective series. The supernatural element appears in the third book of the series, End of Watch.
- The Outsider (2019), is less hard-boiled crime than it is a detective story, but it features Holly Gibney, one of the major characters from the Mr. Mercedes series.
- Joyland (2014), Hard-Case Crime, contains minor elements of the supernatural. The author plays with some of the conventions of the genre but is for the most part typical of the hard-boiled genre. King turns the Joyland amusement park into a self-contained urban environment, and the focus is on human corruption rather than Evil on a grand scale.
Further Reading: Well-Known Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction
The hard-boiled detective story has retained its appeal since its emergence in the 1930s. The following is a list of some of the best-known examples:
- The Maltese Falcon (1930) Dashiell Hammett—featuring Sam Spade, possibly the quintessential hard-boiled detective played in the movie by Humphrey Bogart. Hammett is considered one of the most influential crime writers of the 20th century.
- The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), James M.
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