Holly by Stephen KingMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Holly is Stephen King’s homage to Holly Gibney, the meek character introduced in Mr. Mercedes. When we first met Holly, she was a strange bird grieving her aunt and thrown together with ex-cop Bill Hodges and high school kid Jerome to find the sadistic killer who stole her great aunt’s car and used it to plow into a line of people waiting for a job fair. Holly becomes a hero in Mr. Mercedes, and under Bill’s tutelage and throughout the books, she becomes a great detective. She’s also delightfully quirky and easy to cheer on as she grows more comfortable with the outside world.
In Holly, she is now grieving her mother, who even in denying the existence of Covid, died on a ventilator while being treated for Corona.
In Holly’s grief, she is contacted by a mother whose daughter is missing. As the world is still in the thick of Covid and newly vaccinated (at least those who are willing) she decides to take the job, in part to keep herself occupied. The deeper Holly investigates, the more she begins to suspect a serial killer.
In an alternate thread, Emily and Rodney Harris are an older academic couple who have begun to abduct people and then eat them for medicinal purposes. They eat different body parts in the belief that it will relieve them of the many ails of aging.
Holly must catch the killers, but they have on their side the disguise of their advanced age and no motive visible to the outside world.
Barbara, Jerome’s younger sister, plays a big role in this book, too. We follow her story of her budding gifts as a poet.
As with many of King’s books, I enjoyed Holly very much. She is a curious character who keeps returning and who grows in each iteration. King’s ability to create characters shines in this book, where the goodness of Jerome and Barbara lights Holly up, and the lack of humanity of the Harris’s and their diabolical selfishness simmers.
Would I teach this book? Holly is a book that can stand alone or be taught as a study of a minor character developed through a series into a major character. It is also a good study in using current events (Covid and the political discussions that followed) and is plenty creepy. Perhaps the best way to teach Holly would be to study how both plot and characters are developed, without either suffering.
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