Not the best King I’ve read — but very good. 

Never Flinch (2025) is a crime novel by Stephen King. 

A stand alone book, but one that includes fan favourite recurring character Holly Gibney.

Two stories run in parallel, then converge for the finale. 

1. Holly Gibney signs on as body guard for a controversial celebrity feminist activist on tour.
2. Detective Izzy Jaynes searches for an insane multiple personality who plans to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” 

For me, the Izzy Jaynes storyline was more interesting. That bad guy truly bizarre. 

Gospel singer Sista Bessie is one of those terrific King characters with whom you can truly relate.

He’s one of our best storytellers. 

Hidden Nature (2025) is another of her terrific romance novels. Uplifting.

She’s one of the best storytellers.

The murder mystery is less compelling. Too drawn out. (Her fans like LOONNNGGGG books.)

I did like the bad guys, however.

I love the details she includes in every book. You always learn something. In this case, I learned much about home renovation.

Natural Resources police officer, Sloan Cooper, is the focus. An interesting job.

She’s shot. Died. And shocked back to life on the operating table.

Sloan searches online for similar cases of people who have come back from the dead — as the killers seem to be targeting them.

The 6th book in the Jane Whitefield series — Runner (2009) — is good, but the weakest of the collection, so far.

For more than a decade, Jane pursued her unusual profession: “I’m a guide . . . I show people how to go from places where somebody is trying to kill them to other places where nobody is.”

Then she promised her husband she would never work again, and settled in to live a happy, quiet life as Jane McKinnon, the wife of a surgeon in Amherst, New York.

But when a bomb goes off in the middle of a hospital fundraiser, Jane finds herself face to face with the cause of the explosion: a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across the country by a team of hired hunters.

That night, regardless of what she wants or the vow she’s made to her husband, Jane must come back to transform one more victim into a runner.

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The 5th book in the excellent Jane Whitefield series is the best yet, I’d say.

Blood Money (2002)

Jane Whitefield, the fearless “guide” who helps people in trouble disappear, make victims vanish, has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon, when she is called upon again, to face her toughest opponents yet.  

Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso.   Yet the deceptively simple task of hiding a girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events, and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the mafia’s man with the money.  

Bernie has a photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century,he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time, stealing billions from hidden mafia accounts and donating the money to charity.  

Heart-stopping pace, fine writing, and mesmerizing characters combine in Blood Money to make it the best novel yet by the writer called “one of America’s finest storytellers,”

Scott Carson is the pen name of Michael Koryta, one of my favourite authors.

“Where They Wait (2021) is so readable, you’ll be a couple of hundred pages in before you realize you’re terrified…and then you can’t put it down. Mesmerizing.”

—Stephen King

I notice that Stephen King is always generous with each author setting a book similar to his style … in Maine. 😀

This book is very readable. It’s a bit slow getting going. But I still recommend it — unless you hate horror.

Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. 

It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years.

The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas—relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing—it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation—but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.

So do the nightmares.

Linwood Barclay is an excellent author.

Whistle is his 2025 book.

… a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed.

“Terrific.”— Stephen King on Whistle

It did remind me of a King novel.

The first book in this series — Mindful of Murder — is excellent.

Book 2 not nearly as good.

And book 3 — Contemplation of a Crime (2025) — I could almost call BAD.

Sketchy and unlikely plot. Not much happens.

I won’t continue with these books.

Buddhist butler and reluctant investigator Helen Thorpe bands together with her fellow butler-school graduates to rescue her very wealthy employer and his son …

Butler Helen Thorpe is not one to judge, but the participants in Close Encounters for Global Healing are astonishingly unpleasant.

The five-day program brings together people from across the political spectrum with the goal of helping them bridge their ideological and personal differences. …

The motley assortment of participants includes a burned-out environmental activist, an internet troll, a clued-out consumerist, an alleged white nationalist, and a man who was arrested at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. …

No rapprochement between the warring—or at least endlessly bickering—parties seems possible. But when something deadly happens, they must learn to work together. …