Pete finds a clever use for the money, and revels, in solitary bliss, in Rothstein’s “nasty, funny, and sometimes wildly moving prose”. More than 30 years later, the chest is discovered by Pete Saubers, a boy whose family is in dire financial straits after his father fell victim to the villain of King’s previous thriller, Mr Mercedes. Hyperventilating with anticipation at the prospect of reading Jimmy’s story, but aware of the forces of law on his trail, he buries his treasure in an old chest, only to end up with a life sentence for another crime. A man who could do that doesn’t deserve to live,” says Morris, before fleeing the scene, notebooks and cash and (somewhat briefly, sadly for them) accomplices in tow. “You created one of the greatest characters in American literature, then shit on him. Jimmy is “an American icon of despair in a land of plenty”, according to Time he’s the star of Rothstein’s era-defining “Runner” trilogy, and coiner of the slogan that adorns the T-shirts of students across the US: “Shit don’t mean shit.” But, really, he’s heard rumours of the dozens of notebooks Rothstein has filled with his writing in the decades since he retired from public life entirely, and is desperate to find a new ending for Rothstein’s creation, Jimmy Gold. Morris has come to Rothstein’s remote New Hampshire house with a pair of thugs, ostensibly to rob the elderly author.

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