Morris knows he can’t sell the notebooks – including a new Jimmy Gold story! – right away so, after a series of events that become extremely important later in the story, he buries the notebooks and money under a tree trunk near his childhood home. Shortly after that, he’s sent to prison for an unrelated crime.
Enter Pete Saubers, the boy who lives with his parents and little sister in Bellamy’s old house. He also finds the money and notebooks and does something rather altruistic with the money, although it helps him as well. But when the money runs out, he decides to try to sell the notebooks.
Shortly after that he crosses paths with Bellamy – who has been released from prison after 30-some years and is furious to discover the money and notebooks are gone.
The scenes where Bellamy is trying to find out who has the notebooks, and then when he does find out, are some of the most intense I’ve ever read – by King or anyone. It’s pulse-pounding action, for sure. The final Bellamy/Pete scene is one of the eeriest King has ever written.
Add to all of this Hodges, Holly and Jerome from “Mr. Mercedes, who have no idea what they’re getting into when Pete’s little sister asks for help because her brother is acting strange.
Hodges is also obsessed with “Mr. Mercedes” – aka Brady Hartsfield – who is catatonic in a nursing home after the incident when he tried to blow up a building holding a rock conert.
Or is he catatonic? Hodges doesn’t think so.
In short, another winner from Stephen King.
