The filmmakers behind the Audience series Mr. Mercedes made an unconventional choice when it came to developing the show’s second season. Instead of following the map set out by Stephen King in the writing of what’s known as the Bill Hodges trilogy, showrunner David E. Kelley and the producers made the choice to skip from adapting the first book, Mr. Mercedes, to adapting the third book, End Of Watch – bypassing the middle story, Finders Keepers.

With no guarantees existing in the world of television, it was a logical move: End Of Watch completes the story of retired detective Bill Hodges’ battle with mass murderer Brady Hartsfield, and adapting the novel as Season 2 provided closure on the arc at a time when a future was not promised. The show certainly took advantage of the opportunity, with the finale featuring Lou Linklatter (Breeda Wool) shooting Brady (Harry Treadaway) in the head and killing him… but one month after that episode’s airing, Audience gave the green light to Season 3.

Ten more episodes were ordered, and Kelley, the producers, and the writers had options. With the changes made from the source material, Mr. Mercedes could tell a whole new story not based on the work of Stephen King, or the series could do some creative maneuverings to loop back and adapt Finders Keepers. Watching Mr. Mercedes Season 3, you glean that they decided to split the difference when cracking the story.

Half of Mr. Mercedes’ final batch of episodes is based on the story that Stephen King tells in the middle chapter of his detective fiction trilogy, but the other half is wholly original – playing out the aftermath of the events that transpire at the end of Season 2 (which, it must be noted, deviated greatly from End Of Watch). The end result is a strange brew to digest in this week’s Adapting Stephen King.

What Finders Keepers Is About

Finders Keepers is a surprising read in that Bill Hodges is relegated to a much smaller role compared to the character’s prominence in the novels that bookend it in the Bill Hodges trilogy (in fact, he doesn’t actually make his first appearance until page 157 in the first edition hardcover). We learn that Bill’s life has become much fuller since he caught Brady Hartsfield – most notably with the launch of a private detective firm co-owned by the odd-but-lovable Holly Gibney – and he ends up being an integral figure in the plot as everything comes to a head. However, the primary focus of the book is a criminal named Morrie Bellamy, a teenage boy named Pete Saubers, and a crime of obsession that ends up linking them.

Going back to the year 1978 (31 years before Brady Hartsfield drove a Mercedes into a line at a jobs fair), the novel begins as Morrie and two associates, Curtis Rogers and Freddy Dow, break into the home of reclusive author John Rothstein. While Curtis and Freddy are solely interested in the cash that the writer has, Morrie is a fanatic who has long resented Rothstein because of the way he ended a trilogy of books centering on a character named Jimmy Gold. Less interested in money, he wants to get his hands on rumored unpublished works written in notebooks that continue Jimmy’s story, and when he finds them, he ends up killing Rothstein as well as Curtis and Freddy.

When Morrie goes to an old friend and unscrupulous book seller named Andrew Halliday to tell him about the crime, he understands that having the notebooks is dangerous, and he makes the decision to stash them along with Rothstein’s money in a plastic-lined trunk that he buries on the property of his childhood home. Going out to a bar that night, he gets blackout drunk, and when he wakes up he is in a jail cell, having been arrested not for the Rothstein murder and robbery, but instead for rape, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest. After he pleads guilty, he is sentenced to life in prison, and the woman he violated testifies against his parole at every opportunity.