Holly Gibney

So I went a little Stephen King crazy last month and read almost every book that features the character Holly Gibney: Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch, The Outsider, and Holly. I haven’t read the Holly story from If It Bleeds yet, but I plan to.

Holly is an easy character to like. She’s anxious, honorable, obsessive compulsive, always taking things literally, prone to panic attacks, and always willing to do what’s right even if it means putting herself in danger. She also has an infectious brand of hopefulness she refers to as “Holly Hope.”

We meet Holly in the first book of the Bill Hodges crime novel Mr. Mercedes. She seems like she's barely holding herself together, quiet and seemingly fragile, pressed under the thumb of her domineering mother, despite being a grown adult. But she quickly proves that appearances can be deceiving, joining Hodges on his mission to find and stop a mass murderer.

The first two Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney books have no supernatural elements. They are strict crime novels. But at the very end of book two, a supernatural possibility is briefly hinted at. And this is an important little detail because without it, you would go into book three totally unprepared for the emergence of a villain with psionic abilities.

Expectations are such a big part of genre fiction. So I wondered if this extreme genre-shift in End of Watch, the last Hodges story, would work. But in Stephen King’s hands, it doesn't feel as much like a departure as a return to familiar terrain—and not in a bad way. It is a good example of how there are no rules in writing except for what you can pull off. And I think he did. But I have to wonder, would anybody other than Stephen King have been able to do that? As readers, we are not surprised when someone with psychic powers shows up in a King novel. In fact, we’ve almost come to expect it. And while this can be a blessing and a curse—for example, King has been labeled a horror writer despite writing in many different genres—King has learned how to use the expectations of his readers to his advantage.

The Holly Gibney stories embrace that there are both natural and supernatural horrors, evils that come from within and evils that come from without. King once said that he likes writing about Outside Evil because it’s a comforting thought, the idea that evil is a product of some external force instead of something within ourselves. Maybe that’s why he ended the Bill Hodges chapter with a supernatural enemy. Because ending a crime series with a killer that uses mind control on his victims is oddly reassuring after two novels that show how horrible so-called regular people can be.

But no matter where the evil comes from, Holly follows the evidence where it leads. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” And perhaps the idea of tracking down bad guys, supernatural or not, is a kind of escape from Holly's own psychological demons. She spends so much time worrying about imaginary dangers lurking in the shadows that when the real ones show up, she is surprisingly calm. To her, the ever-presence of danger—whether real or imagined—is something she takes for granted; it's what her brain is constantly preparing for. There's a line in The Outsider when the detective who partners up with Holly says, “Maybe this is when the real Holly Gibney shows herself.”

As someone who deals with anxiety myself, it is inspiring to read a character who manages her mental health issues and doesn’t let them stop her from living her life and doing what’s right. And yes, there is a sort of super-power element to Holly, this inner fortitude cultivated through the stress of her inner turmoil. But it is the fact that she chooses to endure, chooses hope over despair, that makes her impressive. These days, we could all do with a little Holly Hope.