Finders Keepers

The second Bill Hodges novel (2015) is structured in two timelines. In 1978, obsessive literary fan Morris Bellamy kills his favorite author, John Rothstein, to steal his unpublished notebooks. In the present, teenager Pete Saubers finds the buried notebooks and uses the money inside to save his family—not knowing that Bellamy, newly released from prison, is hunting the notebooks.

Less so than the first or third book. Hodges enters the plot in the second half; the novel's real protagonist is Pete Saubers and its real villain is Morris Bellamy. It is as much a novel about literary obsession and the dangerous relationship between fan and author as it is a thriller.

Rothstein is a fictional author clearly modeled on J.D. Salinger—a reclusive literary giant who wrote one celebrated series and then disappeared from public life, with obsessive fans convinced he has written more. The novel explores what it would mean to actually possess an author's unpublished work, and the moral questions that follow.

It stands alone reasonably well—the Rothstein plot is self-contained and Pete's story needs no prior context. Bill Hodges's role is secondary here but readers unfamiliar with him will still follow the novel. The Bill Hodges Trilogy rewards reading in sequence but does not require it.