New novel by Stephen King: This is what "No Turning Back" is about

"What you're about to do is completely insane," thinks the man Stephen King calls Trig. "If you do this, there's no turning back," he warns himself. But Trig doesn't listen; in the pages to come, he will become a murderer—a moral murderer, as he sees it.

He has written a letter of warning to the police chief of Buckeye City, Ohio. It states that an innocent man has been killed. As compensation, he intends to "kill 13 innocents and one guilty man"—an "act of atonement." Police officer Isabelle Jaynes is assigned to the case. And Izzy soon enlists a friend well known to King fans: Detective Holly Gibney.

She played the detective: Actress Justine Lupe played the role of Holly Gibney in the three seasons of the series "Mr. Mercedes" (2017-2019).

Source: picture alliance / Geisler-Fotopress

"Never Flinch" is the title of the horror king's new book, which translates to "No Turning Back" in German. Trig, who converses with his dead father, does not give up on his revenge for the victim of a miscarriage of justice: Cary Tolliver, a professional rival, planted child pornography on bank employee Alan Duffrey. The jury found him guilty, and Duffrey was stabbed to death in prison after the jealous man's later confession was suppressed by the prosecutor.

Trig, short for Trigger (which has a double meaning for the pull of a revolver but also for the name of a famous Hollywood horse), shoots alternates instead of jurors—chance encounters, whose bodies he hands pieces of paper with the names of the jury members. This makes him unfathomable in two ways.

Except, of course, for Holly Gibney, who is no longer afraid of anything since encountering some of the inexplicable things between heaven and earth. Unlike, for example, the third installment of the "Mr. Mercedes" trilogy (where she was still a minor character) or "The Outsider," King's seventh Holly story is a thriller without vampires, revenants, or shapeshifters.

This time, the enemy is merely a mentally ill person, which makes him no less dangerous. Who is Trig, really? Why does the dead banker drive him to this excess? Who murdered Duffrey? Holly, King's middle-aged Miss Marple, also enters this mystery and looks around attentively. And she, too, doesn't back down.

King freely admits that he has fallen in love with his innocent Holly. As a person on the autism spectrum who was patronized by her (deceased) mother, she resembles his early, tragic heroine "Carrie" (1974).

Only she is more successful: The telekinetically gifted high school student Carrie White was only able to pacify the two fronts of her life – oppression by a fanatically religious mother and constant and escalating bullying by her classmates – through an infernal outburst of violence.

Holly Gibney, on the other hand, learns to free herself from unhealthy dependencies, to venture into new social relationships, to view her deficits as talents, to overcome her fears, and to achieve professional success with the agency "Finders Keepers." A story of emancipation.

King's politically liberal influence is more evident in his "Holly" books than ever before. With the author and feminist Kate McKay, whose bodyguard Holly becomes in "No Turning Back," King introduces a controversial figure on the topic of abortion for the MAGAs, who promote a 1950s gender balance. "The men who have had abortions put their hands up. The ones who haven't put their hands down," Kate provokes at one of her lectures. Laughter, men drop their hands in embarrassment. "What, none of you? That's crazy, I mean—holy cow! But who makes the laws here...?"

Kate, too, is targeted by fanatics, persecuted by religious anti-abortionists who want to kill her to make an example of her. The assassination attempt is initiated by a deacon who belongs to one of those backward-looking, Trump-friendly churches. For King, faith doesn't move mountains; it drives the mind crazy.

A master of deduction and intuition: Cynthia Erivo played Holly Gibney in the horror miniseries "The Outsider," in which a shapeshifter committed murders.

Source: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP/dpa

The criminal prosecutor Doug Allen, who set Trig up to commit murder, also has a buddy picture of Trump's vice president, JD Vance, on his desk. Vance serves as an amplifier of his depravity, so to speak.

King may have deemed such blatantness necessary for his US audience, a country where half the population seems oblivious to the fact that a "corrupt, incompetent, and treacherous government is in power," as rock star Bruce Springsteen currently puts it at his European concerts. For German readers, however, the photo seems like a wink.

"Shoemaker, stick to your last," Holly warns herself at the beginning, when she feels "that tingling" that the presence of crime triggers within her, while the insurance forms she's struggling with at her agency bore her. Because she gives in to that tingling, we readers follow her to the fiery end of an entertaining story that, despite its inherent social critique, isn't one of King's strongest.

And with a few spooky closing words, it reminds us of the author's strengths and where we'd love to travel with him next time. There's always a way back to the Twilight Zone! Perhaps King will encounter the forces that brought Trump and Maga to power there.

Stephen King: “No Turning Back” (translated by Bernhard Kleinschmidt), Heyne-Verlag, 640 pages, 28 euros (published on June 11)