There is perfect symmetry to the way Stephen King aligns the opening of End of Watch, the smashing final installment of his trilogy, with that of its first installment ... when [King] writes here about pain, he does it with astounding honesty ... This is his best book since the vastly ambitious Under the Dome (2009), and it's part of a newly incisive, reality-based part of his career. At some point, the phantasmagorical became less central to him than the frightening prospects to be found in the real world. And he uses his ever-powerful intimacy with readers to convey the damage life can wreak.
So much for the page-turning aspects of End of Watch, which are many, complex, and grimly entertaining. More intriguing is the novel’s emotional heart, which resides in Hodges. As the book opens, the aging detective learns he has pancreatic cancer. He refuses treatment and tells no one, though the loyal Holly quickly figures out the truth. King sends Hodges, and the reader, on a death march in pursuit of Brady...One finishes this novel feeling great empathy for its resolute protagonist, and even greater trepidation about that next round of Candy Crush.
By End of Watch, the trilogy’s conclusion, the hints of weirdness that King has sprinkled through Finders Keepers have blossomed, Brady’s supernatural abilities are in full flow and King has turned a series that started out as a straight hard-boiled detective story into the horror he is better known for ... the hunt is on, ramping up at a frightening pace to a gory confrontation that pays bloody homage to the creator of one of fiction’s most enduring serial killers, Thomas Harris (to whom the book is dedicated). End of Watch may be a return to more classic King fare, but it’s still Bill and Holly’s decidedly down-to-earth detecting that makes the novel shine. I’d back these two anywhere, and can only hope that, as King recently hinted, he might return to these characters.
End of Watch gives us King at the height of his powers. Masterfully plotted, the novel is propelled toward its page-blurring conclusion by two deadly forces: Hodges’ advancing disease and Brady’s relentless murderous impulse.
Maintaining a tight structure, King uses End of Watch to loop back to Hodges’ handling of the explosive episode that started off the trilogy ... As is often the case, what is utterly beguiling is King’s slapdash audacity...There are times, though, when [this] slapdash audacity can be off-putting ... There are many stereotypical themes and devices in crime fiction: righteous cops shooting a criminal at the novel’s end, gender constructs salvaged from another age, invincible heroes and so on. End of Watch is burdened by none of them. It’s a great big genre-busting romp, a gloriously fitting end to the Bill Hodges trilogy.
King brings back characters from the first two books (my favorite: the socially awkward Holly Gibney, Hodges’ partner at the detective agency) and introduces a few new ones. He excels once again by giving all of them human traits and foibles, making the reader wonder and worry about who will remain standing as the story hurtles toward an inevitable standoff between Hodges and Hartsfield (a warning to the squeamish, there are several frank depictions of suicide in this story). As the book’s title suggests, there is finality and loss in the final pages. Readers may find themselves wiping away a few tears as this well-written, involving series comes to an end.
King smoothly moves between points of view with his main characters to maintain the book’s gripping page-turning pace, while also revealing the whodunit as well as the how-they-did-it in a gratifying way. A packed tale in itself, End of Watch is treated as a true third act, as readers catch up with characters from previous books and lingering questions are answered ... End of Watch brings finality to their story — and to the trilogy, as strong a King series as The Dark Tower in terms of characterization and pure storytelling. When it comes to the gumshoe genre, fingers crossed King’s not yet closed for business.
End of Watch won’t go down as a landmark in the crime-fiction genre: As gifted as he is at intricate plotting, King’s no match for Elmore Leonard or John D. MacDonald. But the book leaves a surprisingly deep, melancholy mark, crystallizing the themes that have become prevalent in King’s recent work...The novel sometimes seems rushed: There are stretches in which the characters spout so much expository dialogue at each other you feel like you’re reading a screenplay. But you tear through this book so quickly, the flaws are easy to forgive. End of Watch hurtles toward a conclusion you anticipate and dread in equal measure — that wonderful, terrible anxiety King’s constant readers have been relishing for more than four decades now.
...an entertaining thriller that combines the villain of Mr. Mercedes with the supernatural elements hinted at in 2015’s Finders Keepers to create a suspenseful yarn spun with Mr. King’s renowned flair for the otherworldly ... What makes End of Watch compelling in comparison to the triology’s first two books is the supernatural bent Mr. King introduces to the story. While the previous books are perfectly serviceable mysteries, End of Watch is a marked improvement ... For some readers, particularly those who are fans of Mr. King, the lightning-fast nature of the plot and its more uncanny elements will fit together perfectly. However, readers looking for more grounded suspense in the Patricia Cornwell/Jeffrey Deaver vein may find themselves frustrated with the unexpected turns the author makes in explaining the killer’s actions.
While the first book poked at the edges of the genre and the second stretched its conventions, this one blows a hole in the format, interweaving the supernatural and a police procedural ... The first two books in the series stood as King's homage to the grizzled, trenchcoat clad, fedora-sporting gumshoes of the pulp detective classics. And this certainly has moments of that. But as the supernatural element of the plot gains momentum, opening a door to the literary school that King knows best, the story kicks into a higher gear that you don't even sense is there until you're caught up in it. In that way, it's a lot like the suicides that are at the heart of the story.
King wrote the first two books of the Hodges Trilogy as straight crime fiction, without major paranormal or supernatural elements. This time around, the powers Brady develops go beyond that realistic territory, to chilling effect. King, who has occasionally been dinged by fans for not offering enough explanation for how some of his fantasy elements work, is careful in End of Watch to walk us through exactly how Brady came to be an even more formidable threat than he was before the brain injury. It's fantasy, sure, couldn't really happen. But, as always, King creates such a compelling scenario that it will leave you wondering. And maybe rethinking your kid's video games.
Though it makes the experience richer to have read the earlier novels, End of Watch also works just fine as a stand-alone book. King has developed such a comfort level with his characters that the story slips into an immediate, fast-paced rhythm without a hiccup. As with so many of King’s stories, the chugging plot rises on his ability to combine narrative drive with a sense of how ordinary people might think and act in the face of extraordinary situations ... Credit King for rolling out a chilling, and plausible, recipe for Internet-fueled hysteria. Combined with a whiteout winter storm, a tick-tock race to stop mass detonation, and nail-biting near-misses, End of Watch roars to a satisfying conclusion.
For some readers, this strong note of unreality may be tonally jarring, as if the members of CSI: Cyber had to track down a suspect who can time-travel. But both the mundane and the magical have always been part of the King multiverse. Maybe there is no good reason to keep them apart here, despite the potential grumblings of hard-boiled crime fiction purists. In any case,once the plot of End of Watch gets up and running, most readers will be flexible enough in their suspension of disbelief to enjoy the creepy twists, clever callbacks and poignant revelations. The wintery, blood-soaked climax of the novel provides a fitting resolution not only to the action at hand but to the trilogy as a whole.
