A review by emily_m_green
Finders Keepers by Stephen King
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Thank you to Fort Vancouver Regional Library for making Stephen King’s Finders Keepers free and available to the public. Thank you, also, for inviting our high school to participate in Skamania County Reads and to learn from Brian Fies, author of Fire Story, this year’s pick. It made my English teacher heart feel good to watch students make use of library materials and choose books to sign out and read.
In Finders Keepers, Morris Bellamy is a reader and a criminal, and in the opening chapter he escalates from burglary to murderer when he kills John Rothstein, the famous writer who has not published in decades and is rumored to have unpublished writing hidden in his house. Morris does find many notebooks filled with handwriting, but when he murders the author, he immediately makes his plan to sell the writing on the blackmarket infinitely more difficult. One mistake leads to another, and soon Morris is back in jail, for an entirely different, but still heinous, crime.
Several decades later, high school student Pete Saubers stumbles upon the notebooks, along with a significant amount of money that Morris and his buddies had also stolen from the late Rothstein. The money seems like a divine intervention, as his family life is crumbling under the weight of poverty and his father’s terrible injury at the hands of Mr. Mercedes (see the first Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson story). The money runs out, but by then the family--and the national economy--are more stable. Meanwhile, Morris Bellamy is biding his time and hoping for parole, so he can finally read what Rothstein wrote in those notebooks.
As the worlds of Pete and Morris collide, bringing into the fray Bill, Holly, and Jerome, it will be another epic fight for the team.
Finders Keepers is, notably, almost free of supernatural activity, and its plot is not concerned at all with it. Instead, the novel is once again about good and evil and the way that we shape the world with our imaginations and actions. It is interesting to note that the famous author is killed by one of his fans, which seems reminiscent of Misery, which I read quite recently. In Misery, of course, a writer becomes the prisoner of a deranged and violent fan. You gotta watch out for those fans.
Finders Keepers, though, is less about celebrity and more about motive. Morris, in his round in juvie before his adult and more serious crimes, knew that when he was asked who was responsible for his crimes, the correct answer was himself. But because he believed his mother was the cause, and she had indeed quite forcefully pushed his buttons, he professed to blame her for the crimes that he had committed, even to his own detriment. Morris refuses responsibility for his actions.
Pete, however, is not responsible for the crumbling of his parents’ marriage. It is not his fault that his father lost his job, nor that he was badly injured, nor that the tension makes his father feel helpless and his mother feel frustrated. However, when Pete gets the windfall of the mysterious money, he devises a plan to get it to his parents and very likely saves their marriage.
The difference between Morris and Pete is so striking, it seems to shout through the pages--what makes one boy a criminal and the other a hero is taking responsibility. And so.
Would I teach Finders Keepers? Perhaps. I can see it being taught in a genre literature course or maybe in a writing course about creating monsters or writing multiple timelines. It is certainly an entertaining book with some of King’s better writing.