Fresh off of her mother’s death from COVID, Holly Gibney is hired to find a missing young woman by her hysterical mother.  The trail leads her to a string of missing people going back years, all last seen in the same area.  With the rest of her team either incapacitated or distracted by their own lives, Holly goes it alone, tracking the trail of the missing to the home of a retired couple.  Could they be protecting a serial killer?  Or is the truth much more disturbing?  Holly intends to find out before telling anyone what she’s found, which could be her final mistake.

Stephen King’s latest, Holly, brings back the Holly Gibney character I was first introduced to in 2018’s The Outsider.  She’s the lead this time around, in a tale that won the Goodreads Choice Award for horror, chasing down cannibal professors.  This now makes four years straight with a King work, my longest streak, and is my eighth post-college book of his, surpassing my total from high school and college.