Never Flinch is the next book after 2024's excellent You Like It Darker, a collection of short stories, showing King isn't slowing down any time soon.

Multiple TV and movie adaptations of King's projects are currently in the works, as well, including Mike Flanagan's The Life of Chuck and his Dark Tower TV adaptation, Oz Perkins' The Monkey, The Institute TV adaptation, Francis Lawrence's The Long Walk, and Edgar Wright's The Running Man. Clearly, there's no shortage of Stephen King content. Still, his books are where it all begins and ends, and a lot is riding on Never Flinch to continue the Holly Gibney universe on as strong a footing as possible.

Stephen King's Never Flinch Should Copy The Outsider's Balance Of Mystery & Horror

It Was A Horror Story Wrapped In The Trappings Of A Traditional Procedural

In the past decade, King has shifted his focus to a new genre: the crime thriller. He kicked off his crime era with 2014's Mr. Mercedes, the first book in the Bill Hodges trilogy, and since then, his novels in that crime universe have all been well-received. Still, plenty of his longtime Constant Readers have been unhappy with this focus, much preferring his old-school horror writing. While the human criminals and serial killers in his crime books are monsters in their own right, most readers far prefer his supernatural monsters to mundane ones. Even Stephen King's human villains of the past have almost all had some sort of uncanny force driving them beyond mere human psychosis.

This is exactly why The Outsider was so good, and the TV miniseries adaptation so well-liked. It used the framework of the usual crime mystery but at its heart was a supernatural, shapeshifting entity that killed children. The eponymous Outsider, also known as El Cuco, is derived from the El Cucuy/Coco myth of Spain and Mexico that serves as the equivalent of the culture's boogeyman, a malevolent entity that kidnaps and eats children. The Outsider did a great job of starting out as a traditional detective procedural but slowly morphing into horror as the protagonists realized they were dealing with something inhuman. It was a nice return to form for King, and Never Flinch will hopefully keep that balance of supernaturally-driven crime.

Never Flinch Could Sur The Outsider If It Fully Embraces Stephen King's Horror Roots

There's A Lot Of Potential With Never Flinch

Not a whole lot is known yet about Never Flinch. What is known is that Holly Gibney will return, and it will blend together two different storylines and feature a few different perspectives. The villains are being framed as a killer on a revenge mission and a vigilante obsessed with a notable female celebrity. That's all that's known of the antagonists – who may actually be the same person, in the end; it's not clear. It's also not clear if the antagonists are driven by pure human psychosis and violence, like Misery's Annie Wilkes, or by a supernatural force possessing them or driving them to madness, such as The Stand's Trashcan Man, or Ed Deepneau in Insomnia.

That said, plenty of Stephen King readers are hoping for the latter and a return to the author's horror roots. If Never Flinch adopts the same structure as The Outsider, infusing the story with pure horror elements in the trappings of a procedural, it could be excellent. That's not to say it will be a poor offering if it doesn't: Stephen King can still write a heck of a yarn, even if there are no supernatural entities involved. And it's understandable why King might be more interested in human evil in our current times than inhuman. Still, no one does horror like Stephen King, and if Never Flinch re that, it will be a welcome full-circle moment to the first and best of his genres.