Holly by Stephen King: a timely work of crime fiction about not judging a book by its cover

By Andrew Dix, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Film, Loughborough University

At the age of 76, with nearly 70 novels and short story collections behind him, American author Stephen King shows few signs of slowing down. His latest novel Holly, hefty in scale and elaborate in plotting, is the work of an energetic writer, not one who is getting tired.

The book is a compelling composite of the crime and horror genres, as addictive as the cigarettes which the title character finds herself smoking, as she investigates a spate of abductions in a midwest town.

One of the incidental pleasures offered by Holly is its allusion to books from earlier in King’s…

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