Stephen King will conclude his trilogy about retired detective Bill Hodges and multiple murderer Brady Hartsfield in a new novel, due out next summer.

King’s publishers have announced that the final novel in the Hodges trilogy, End of Watch, will be published on 7 June 2016. It follows Mr Mercedes, in which Hartsfield killed eight people and ended up in a vegetative state in hospital, and Finders Keepers.



UK editor Philippa Pride at Hodder & Stoughton said End of Watch brings the trilogy “to a terrifying and poignant conclusion”, praising “the brilliant versatility of Stephen King’s writing as he takes the detective novel [in] a sublimely powerful new direction”.

Hodges, who runs an investigation agency with the woman who put Hartsfield into hospital in Mr Mercedes, Holly Gibney, has continued to visit the murderer in Finders Keepers, not entirely convinced by his brain injury. In End of Watch, he and Holly take on a murder-suicide linked to the Mercedes massacre.

“Foiled in his attempt to commit a second mass murder, Hartsfield is confined to a hospital brain injury unit in a seemingly unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: Brady is able to influence both his physician and the hospital librarian to commit crimes in the outside world,” said Hodder. “Now, the technological genius has created a hypnotic electronic fishing game which compels users to commit suicide, and he is determined to target the three people who put him in hospital – Hodges and his sidekicks Holly and Jerome. Then he plans to initiate a suicide epidemic.”

The first novel in the series, Mr Mercedes, is being developed for television by Sonar Entertainment. “When it comes to grabbing an audience by the throat and giving them no choice but to keep reading, King has no equal, and I challenge you not to finish this novel in one breathless sitting,” wrote author Michael Marshall Smith of the novel in the Guardian.