I have to admit, my experience with Holly Gibney’s earlier series wasn’t the best. But with Never Flinch, Holly and King truly make a comeback.
In this fourth installment, the police receive a threatened letter from an anonymous figure calling himself the mastermind behind the Surrogate Juror Murders. Victims are found with slips of paper naming the jurors from the Alan Duffrey trial. Duffrey was a man falsely accused of being a pedophile, framed by his own colleague, and left to die in prison. Justice failed Duffrey. Now the killer has taken it upon himself to deliver punishment. Cold, merciless, and strangely righteous, his message is simple, if the system won’t hold the guilty accountable, he will.
Meanwhile, Holly Gibney, now running the Finders Keepers agency, takes on bodyguard work for feminist speaker Kate McKay. Kate is controversial, branded a zealot for hearing the voices of oppressed women. But not everyone admires her. One religious zealot is convinced Kate is defying God and will stop at nothing to silence her.
These two psychos intertwined in the last hundred pages, creating a finale that is messy, unsettling, nerve-wracking, and absolutely unputdownable. I dragged this read over ten days just to savor it though believe me, it begs to be devoured in one sitting. King reminds me why he’s my favorite storyteller. This one gets a solid 4.8⭐ from me. And since nobody asked, I’m now reading Mr. Mercedes. 😅