End of Watch

End of Watch left me feeling rather conflicted about the novel. This is the third and final novel of the Bill Hodges trilogy. The first two novels of the series are relatively straight forward detective stories. Being that is not Stephen King's typical modus operandi they felt fresh and of a different approach than he had taken than the majority of his work and that is to their benefit. This third novel however takes a dramatic left turn in the series and veers into more typical early Stephen King territory with supernatural powers taking center stage. The problem is that as a trilogy this feels to be tonally off and that the characters are suddenly in unfamiliar waters. The characters seem to quickly accept the supernatural occurrences even when outsiders in the novel do not. It comes off as awkward that these characters who exhibited strong detective skills so readily accept the supernatural in the third novel. I had positive feelings about the characters story arcs and how King resolved the novel and the trilogy for them. I would have preferred a different antagonist and a straight detective novel to finish the series however. Overall only semi satisfying due to King's story choices.