Stephen King on new novel "End of Watch," thoughts on Donald Trump
When it comes to the art of suspenseful storytelling, few do it better than Stephen King.
His latest novel, "End of Watch," is the final part of his bestselling Bill Hodges trilogy that started with "Mr. Mercedes."
In the crime fiction book, the antagonist and murderer, Brady Hartsfield, is back to take revenge not only on Hodges, a retired police detective, but also the city. King said was inspired to write the series after watching the news.
"I was coming up to South Carolina and I saw a story on the news, local news, about a woman who had run her car into a line of job seekers at a McDonald's," King described in an exclusive interview with "CBS This Morning." "This was at the height of the recession in 2008.... Her boyfriend's girlfriend was in the line, and so she went after him, and I thought, 'There's something here that I really want to write about.'"
King, who has written more than 50 books and sold more than 350 million copies, said almost all of his work draws from organic moments like these. In "End of Watch," he even mentions Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, by having a character describe Hartsfield as someone "living like Donald Trump." King has been vocal about his thoughts on Trump, recently tweeting: "Congrats, Republicans! You're about to nominate a thin-skinned racist with the temperament of a 3-year-old."
"I have to say what I feel, and I'm very concerned about this election because I'm an American," King explained. "I hate the idea when people come back and say, 'Well, this celebrity said this, that celebrity said that.' But at the bottom, we're all just Americans, and we vote, and we're citizens and we talk about politics on Twitter the same way that anybody else does. I come from Maine. We have a governor who supports Donald Trump, and I've seen the results of that over the years, and I'm just very concerned about the elections."
For over 40 years, filmmakers have turned to King's work for inspiration, including classic thrillers like "The Shining" and "Misery." He was also the storyteller behind "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand by Me."
While King said he wouldn't be able to write an Agatha Christie-style mystery novel "where all the pieces are in place and you discover in the final chapter whodunit," he said he liked "the Hitchcock idea."
"Hitchcock once said the difference between horror and suspense is, horror is when a bomb goes off. Suspense is when you see the bomb under the table and the people are having a normal conversation and they don't know it's there and time is ticking down," King explained. "So you know in the 'End of Watch' who the bad guy is. And if you've read the other two, you absolutely know who the bad guy is."