We were first introduced to Holly Gibney as a secondary character in several other novels by Stephen King. While I read and even liked some of those, I'm much more intrigued by the woman in this novel bearing her name.

Holly has matured and is now the driving force behind Finders Keepers, the detective agency she inherited from Bill Hodges and now operates with a partner. In the past, Holly was shy, under the thumb of her bullying mother and obsessed with compulsive habits.

The novel is set during the COVID pandemic, and King skillfully reminds us of the fearful aspects of that scourge and its impact on our lives. Holly's mother has recently succumbed to the plague and she is dealing with a mix of grief and freedom. Her partner Pete is also ill with COVID-19, initially at home and later in hospital. So, Holly is on her own when Penny Dahl, a distraught woman, hires Finders Keepers to look into the disappearance of her daughter.

It doesn't take long for Holly to discover Bonnie Dahl isn't the only person to have gone missing in the same area under mysterious circumstances. Can the cases be connected?

We learn the identity of the kidnappers and their horrific motive long before Holly unravels the skein of clues leading to their lair and finds herself trapped like a fly in a spider's web. King has a habit of killing off the characters we love, so I feared for Holly's future. The man knows how to hook a reader and keep us turning the pages.

There are a couple of interesting subplots in the novel involving Jerome and Barbara Robinson, who both had roles with Holly in previous books. Jerome has published a book about his criminal grandfather and is out of town. But Barbara is on the scene and plays a pivotal role in the main plot.

Stephen King has a reputation for creating frightening characters and situations, often with a supernatural edge. I'm not a big fan of horror fiction. But I've come to know King is equally capable of creating characters who are just as scary without any paranormal help (Misery for example). That's also the case in Holly and those are the books of his that I most enjoy.