King’s work spans many genres, and Mr. Mercedes is his first work of “hard-boiled” detective fiction, which features a down-and-out detective loner protagonist who has had a tough life and needs to get back his sense of self through solving a crime. The detective, Bill Hodges, became the main character in a trilogy that includes Finders Keepers (2015) and End of Watch (2016). A spin-off novel The Outsider (2018), features Holly Gibney, a character who aids Hodges in Mr. Mercedes. The Outsider is more a traditional detective story that also contains supernatural elements. To date, King has written three books for the Hard Case Crime imprint, which specializes in hard-boiled fiction: The Colorado Kid (2005), Joyland (2013), and Later (2021). These books blend traditional hard-boiled detective and mystery tropes with supernatural elements.

The hard-boiled crime genre focuses on human corruption rather than grand themes of good and evil. That, in itself, is something of a departure for King, who often pits protagonists against evil on a cosmic scale. However, even in his stories of cosmic evil, King always exposes the dark side of human nature. Brady Hartsfield, the killer in Mr.