This is the second book from Stephen King featuring the new character Bill Hodges. He was introduced in "Mr. Mercedes" as a retired police officer who is still puzzled about the only important case he hasn't been able to solve while he was on duty. A Mercedes car has been used to plunge into a crowd of job-seekers and the event had resulted in a death and several injuries. The raging ex-detective Bill Hodges was a remarkable character, with his strengths and weaknesses and King had been successful in his rare forays into the natural world - as compared to his usual occupation of walking through the supernatural.

He is bringing back Bill Hodges in a sort of "tangent" and somewhat unrelated story. Peter Straub is a young boy whose father is one of the job-seekers who was severely wounded in the Mercedes incident. The family is desperate, dependent on the single, low-paying job his mother has but Pete has his day when he discovers several envelopes with money inside and several leather-bound notebooks carefully hidden in the bushes. The money certainly helps but he does not know that the money and the notebooks were stolen from the house of murdered author Rothstein and the killer is in jail for life. When the killer comes out on parole and discovers that the money, but more importantly the notebooks storing all the undiscovered works of the deceased author, he will do all he can to discover who did this and make them pay.

I found the story less convincing than the first one in the series, but it is still an enjoyable read.

It looks like the third book in the series named "End of Watch" is going to bring in the supernatural touch that is the trademark of King, so we'll see how the mashup of two genres will work.