Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges)

1978: Meet Morris Bellamy, a reader obsessed by novelist John Rothstein, the reclusive genius who created the celebrated fictional character Jimmy Gold.

Morris is livid – not just because Rothstein has stopped writing but because he has made the nonconformist Jimmy sell out for a career in advertising. Morris breaks into Rothstein’s house and empties his safe of cash. But the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel – and Morris is prepared to kill for them. Later, he goes to jail for another crime but not before he has hidden the spoils.

2009: Meet young Pete Saubers, whose father was brutally injured by a stolen Mercedes while he was queuing at a job fair. When Pete discovers a buried trunk containing the money and notebooks, he realises he has the means to rescue his family from poverty. If he can keep it secret…

2014: Morris is up for parole. And he’s hell-bent on recovering his treasure. That’s when retired detective Bill Hodges – who has set up a company called ‘Finders Keepers’ – is asked to investigate. Together with colleagues Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson, Hodges must rescue Pete from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris…

Not since Misery has King written with such visceral power about a reader with such a dangerous obsession. Finders Keepers is spectacular suspense, and it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life – for good, for bad, for ever.