Mr. Mercedes

The theme of prejudice and preconceptions addresses Hodges’s past mistakes. Hodges learns in the course of his belated investigation that he and his partner, Pete, made a critical error in assuming that Olivia Trelawney left her car unlocked—which allowed it to be stolen by Brady Hartsfield. Like everyone else, they wanted to have someone to blame for the murders: Olivia was an easy scapegoat because she seemed to them to be arrogant, and they found her obsessive-compulsive tics irritating.

Hodges’s prejudice is a part of his growing cynicism as a detective. By the time he retires, that cynicism has become so pronounced that he begins to make fatal mistakes. Hodges’s prejudice toward Olivia prevented him from catching the Mercedes killer, but once he begins to investigate on his own, he realizes that he and Pete were wrong. If they hadn’t jumped to conclusions, they would have realized they needed to look for someone with a lot of technological know-how, which would have brought them much closer to catching the Mercedes killer before he had a chance to manipulate Olivia into dying by suicide. Brady also wouldn’t have been able to set the bomb that killed Janey, so Hodges’s prejudice contributed indirectly to both of those deaths.