Mr. Mercedes

“[Augie] supposed Janice Cray didn’t have to be much of a mind reader to know what he was thinking. ‘There’s no one else. Literally no one. The girl down the street couldn’t stay all night even if I could pay her, and I just can’t. If I don’t get a job, I don’t know what we’ll do.’”

King has a marked liberal philosophy, and it often comes out in his work. He uses Augie and Janice to represent all the hard-working people out of work during the 2008 Great Recession and desperate to be able to support themselves. The socioeconomic symbolism of a luxury car killing innocent jobseekers is intentional.

“According to my research, during your time as a detective, you broke literally hundreds of cases, many of them the kind the press (who Ted Williams called the Knights of the Keyboard) terms ‘high profile.’ You have caught Killers and Robbery Gangs and Arsonists and Rapists. In one article (published to coincide with your Retirement Ceremony), your longtime partner (Det. 1st Grade Peter Huntley) Described you as ‘a combination of by-the-book and intuitively brilliant.’”

This passage is from the letter Brady Hartsfield sent to goad Hodges. It does double duty in that while showing that Brady has investigated Hodges’s background in detail, it also gives the reader an insight into Hodges’s abilities, confirming that he is more than competent to track down the Mercedes killer.

“Now you are probably thinking, ‘What kind of sick and twisted Pervo do we have here?’… I think a great many people would enjoy doing what I did… Most people are fitted with Lead Boots when they are just little kids and have to wear them all their lives. These Lead Boots are called A CONSCIENCE. I have none, so I can soar high above the heads of the Normal Crowd.”

In this passage, Brady describes himself fairly accurately, illustrating that he possesses self-awareness. His self-evaluation establishes him as Hodges’s opposite, particularly his lack of conscience, whereas conscience (i.e., justice) is Hodges’s driving motivation. Brady will go on to illustrate his depravity and the excitement he derives from other people’s pain throughout the novel.