Mr. Mercedes
by Stephen King
★ Top 25 book of 2014 · #17 on Best Books of 2014
After a driver ploughs a stolen Mercedes into a crowd at a job fair, retired cop Bill Hodges receives a taunting letter from the killer. Roused from a gloomy retirement, he races to stop an even deadlier attack.
Best for: Suspense fans who enjoy a retired detective chasing a chilling killer
Mr. Mercedes is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 2014, out of 66 2014 books that cleared our data bar.
What Mr. Mercedes is about
Bill Hodges is a retired, divorced detective with too much time and a lonely routine. Then a letter arrives from someone calling himself Mr Mercedes, the driver who plowed a stolen car into a crowd at a job fair, killing eight people and wounding fifteen. Rather than hand it to his old colleague Pete Huntley, Hodges starts investigating on his own.
He is helped by his seventeen-year-old neighbor Jerome Robinson and by Holly, a fragile relative of the car's owner. The killer is Brady Hartsfield, who works in an electronics store, drives an ice cream truck, and lives with his mother. Stephen King calls it his first hard-boiled detective novel, and it is tense, gritty, and driven by obsession. It won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Novel and opens a trilogy.
Mr. Mercedes on the Best Books of 2014
Mr. Mercedes came out in 2014. Of the 66 books first published in 2014 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #17 on our Best Books of 2014 list.
Why it made the list: 721 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (56 ratings); 38 are reading it right now. The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 2014 list
- Being Mortal Atul Gawande, #15
- Red Rising Pierce Brown, #16
- Archer's Voice Mia Sheridan, #18
- The Crossover Kwame Alexander, #19
See all Best Books of 2014 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 2013 Best Books of 2015.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 567 want to read it, 38 are reading it now and 116 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 4.1 out of 5 from 56 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 73 | 55% |
| Reader love | 55 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 79 | 20% |
Questions about Mr. Mercedes
When was Mr. Mercedes published?
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King was first published in 2014.
Was Mr. Mercedes one of the best books of 2014?
Mr. Mercedes is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 2014, out of 66 2014 books that cleared our data bar. 721 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (56 ratings); 38 are reading it right now.
Why is Mr. Mercedes on the Best Books of 2014 list?
721 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.1 out of 5 (56 ratings); 38 are reading it right now.
More of the best books of 2014
- To All the Boys I've Loved Before Jenny Han, #1
- The Long Haul Jeff Kinney, #2
- Surrounded by Idiots Thomas Erikson, #3
- Zero to One Peter A. Thiel, #4
- After (After Series, Book 1) Anna Todd, #5
- All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr, #6
See the full Best Books of 2014, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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