If you thought that’s the end of it though, boy uses powers to stop ghost bomber, you’d be wrong. He leaves a last-minute note for the police claiming that he’s left one more bomb for them to find, intending to leave his legacy with a literal bang and Liz forcibly recruits Jamie to help look for it. As real as he is an urban legend, Thumper has no motive for his crimes and is interested in only one thing: leaving bombs at seemingly random locations to kill as many people as he can.ĭutton has made it her mission to stop Thumper no matter what it takes, and lucky for her, the man commits suicide just hours after being identified as Kenneth Alan Therriault. She’s dating Jamie’s mother and is desperate to catch the infamous bomber nicknamed Thumper who has been at large for nearly 10 years.

That last of which we will be discussing.Įnter Detective Liz Dutton. King’s three Hard Case Crime novels are Joyland, The Colorado Kid, and, of course, Later.

The supernatural still exists but they’re more like background characters, stepping aside so that the humans can have the run of the show. So if you haven’t read any of King’s Hard Case Crime novels before, there are three by the way, know that he completely turns that around.ĭesigned as pulp crime stories, they’re written in a way that’s reminiscent of the colorful and cheap detective novels you might come across in large stacks at the second-hand bookstore, written in a certain way that makes you think of a platinum blonde with a 50’s look hiding a small gun in her garter, but they’re also so undeniably King. He’s written several detective stories before, but they tend to lean more towards the supernatural than they do crime and are usually packed from dustcover to dustcover with character details and backstories to move along his many subplots. In case you don’t know, Hard Case Crime is an imprint publishing company that specializes in hardboiled crime thrillers, which isn’t necessarily unknown to King. His narrative voice is incredibly distinctive, that is until he whips out a Hard Case Crime novel.

You can pick up any one of his books, without looking at the cover, and have a pretty good guess at who wrote it. Stephen King is known for his gruesome imagination, unique prose, frightening monsters, and a narrative voice that gently borders on breaking the fourth wall.

Stephen king later review