When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to ‘kill thirteen innocents and one guilty’ in ‘an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man’, Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realises that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.

Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard – a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and unhinged righteousness.

IN A NUTSHELL
‘Never Flinch‘ is a thriller with the menace of a horror novel. It’s an immersive, character-driven story that mines the divisive hate and misogyny pulsing through contemporary American politics. It pitches the idea that it’s not enough to stand up for what is good if we blind ourselves to the existence of evil. Evil needs to be seen to be defeated. The plot swept me along. I was engaged with the people. Even so, it lacked the tight integration of theme, plot and character that Stephen King achieves when he’s at his best. 

I immersed myself effortlessly in the audiobook version of ‘Never Flinch‘ for three days, happily giving myself up to the story. I opened the audiobook version ‘Never Flinch‘ when it arrived in my Audible library its publication day. intendingto sample the narration and move on. Instead, I set my reading plans aside and spent the three days compulsively reading the book. 

It’s a thriller with a complex plot. It started with a serial killer on a bizarre revenge mission, a feminist political activist on a speaking tour who has a potentially violent stalker, and a revered retired)rock and soul singer who was making a comeback. I knew that somehow Stephen King was going to bring them all together in a way that put everyone, especially Holly and those she cares about, at risk.

The plot had a very contemporary feel, hooking into the politics of hate that has overtaken America and showing how it has changed public discourse. Stephen King uses the character of Kate McKay to give a face and a voice to one side of that discourse. I liked that although Kate’s speeches are powerful attacks on misogyny and the patriarchy, and her on-stage performance is charismatic, she’s also quite difficult to like. It seemed to me that Stephen King took the dynamic between the comedian and the scriptwriter in ‘Hacks‘ and made it harsher and darker. So dark that Holly Gibney allows herself to be hired as Kate McKay’s bodyguard. Stephen King wasn’t pitching a ‘there are good people on both sides’ argument. As an alternative to McKay, he offers people who range from the misguidely beligerant to the fanatically intolerant. He places one of the Christian fundamentalist megachurches at the violent end of that spectrum.

I always admire Stephen King’s ability to conjure up credible, deeply disturbing evil. This time, he had not one but two evil people, working independently of each other, but both on a collision course with Holly and her people. This produces a lot of forboding and some very tense action scenes. 

The thing that I admired most about this book was how Stephen King created small moments of pure joy for his characters. True, those moments occurred in the deepening shadow of a growing threat, but they still captured the feelings that make life worth fighting for. This ability to nurture joy in the shadow of evil provides the hope that kept me engaged with the plot and the characters. 

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Never Flinch‘. It’s almost fifteen hours long which, before I started it, put me off a little. Once I started to listen, I was immediately swept along. My only challenge became how to find more time in the day to listen to the book. Part of the credit for that momentum belongs to Jesse Mueller’s narration. She gave each character a voice I could believe in AND managed the singing parts, all while keeping a perfect pace. Click on the Youtube link to hear a sample of her narration.