Book Review – Never Flinch

Never Flinch by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m sorry Holly Gibney didn’t come along earlier in Stephen King’s career. She’s a likeable, multi-dimensional character, so if nothing else she could have been a welcome relief from all those books about writers with writer’s block. Sadly, her series didn’t get underway until the author was painfully past his prime. This one reaches novel length only by awkwardly intertwining two different antagonists. And as neither villain has any kind of supernatural abilities, the tale rarely rises above mediocre crime thriller. Further, King seems to be leaning into the cliche about the trouble he has with endings, as the finale here is so abrupt that it makes the preceding 400 pages seem kinda pointless. This is a reasonably entertaining summer read, but it’s a high point neither in the author’s overall career nor the Hodges and Gibney sets in particular.

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