Holly by Stephen King

 

Things aren't going that well for private investigator Holly Gibney at the Finders and Keepers investigative agency.  Covid has shut most things down and Holly's overbearing mother has just died of the disease.  Her partner is out of commission with the virus as well.  Recent jobs have been more of the lost pet variety than crimes Holly could be interested in.  

Still, she has great friends in Jerome and Barbara Robinson, a brother and sister she met through Bill Hodges, her first partner at the agency and the man who brought Holly out of her shell.  She has also just discovered that she is a millionaire as she will inherit everything in her mother's estate.  So when the call  comes in from a frantic mother, Holly is ready for a new case.

The mother wants Holly to find her daughter who went missing a few weeks ago.  She was on her bicycle on her way home after work.  She stopped in a convenience store as she did most days for a soft drink and there her story stopped.  No one saw her after that.  The police think she might have just decided to run away as there was a note left on her bicycle seat saying she had had enough.  But she was twenty-four, college educated with a job she loved.  Why go anywhere?  

Holly agrees to take the case after checking with a police contact who is heading the investigation there and more than willing for Holly to look into it.  As she does, she finds other people who have disappeared in the same area over the years; a college instructor, a young skateboarder, a female janitor at the college and a guy who worked at the local bowling alley.  What ties them all together?  Is it a connection with the college or the location?  As Holly starts to get a grip on what has occurred, she finds an evil she had never expected.

Holly is a character that Stephen King fell in love with.  He originally wrote her as a minor character in Mr. Mercedes but he fell in love with her personality and courage and used her again in Finders Keepers and The Outsiders.  Here she has her own novel and I surely hope this isn't her last appearance.  I'd love to see an entire series written about this woman whose unique mind helps her solve cases and whose personality wasn't allowed to shine until she was middle-aged.  The mystery is convincing and this is one of my favorite King novels.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.