Stephen King’s most anxious character is also his most heroic

In Stephen King’s 2023 crime novel, “Holly,” the author’s favorite character (and mine), Holly Gibney, solves a series of grisly murders in her first stand-alone book after appearing as an anxiety-ridden sleuth in a number of King’s earlier works, starting with the first installment of the Bill Hodges trilogy, “Mr. Mercedes,” in 2014. After forming an unlikely partnership with Hodges and aiding in his investigations, she’s no longer the person she was when her character was first introduced — the chainsmoking and painfully quiet black sheep of a wealthy family — but someone with a deep well of inner strength and an intuitive knack for solving the riddle of others’ lives, but not her own, by making her hangups and compulsions work in her favor, turning what could otherwise be simply referred to as a grab-bag of mental illness into a unique blend of skills that allows her to see clues that others are blind to and recognize patterns in people’s actions that the non-neurospicy would not as easily pick up on. 

Described by King as someone who is insecure and yet at the same time has a lot of courage, Holly doubles down on the work she’s done to not only trust herself as being someone capable of saving the day, but to allow others to trust in her as that, pushing herself even further to combat her insecurities in order to get out of her own way to solve not one case, but two, in her second stand-alone book, “Never Flinch,” in which she takes on a sidequest as a body guard for a larger than life abortion rights influencer named Kate McKay as her life is threatened by a religious zealot stalker while also helping her friend, Detective Izzy Jaynes, investigate a string of murders committed by someone hell-bent on justifying their own beyond strained moral compass. 

Gibney, now well into her 50s, has more than proven her strength as an investigator after learning the ropes from Hodges and taking over the Finders Keepers detective agency following his death, but even her biggest supporters would chuckle at the thought of her working as a bodyguard and she herself would have chuckled the hardest. But, as with the other cases she has worked on, Gibney finds herself positioned on the frontline of dangerous situations that she may not be the obvious choice for — but is the best choice for — because strength has nothing to what with how you look or even how fearful you often are inside and everything to do with your ability to step up and be brave when needed.

Anyone who’s scrolled TikTok or Facebook and come across a video of the owner of a big “guard dog” cowering or running for cover in the presence of perceived danger, only for a chihuahua to come charging in from a back room of the house to attack and protect the home in the larger dog’s stead knows the message here. Small, smart and missing a few marbles is often just what you need when the sh*t hits the fan. And while this shouldn’t be such a surprise in its effectiveness, even King saw it as a humorous setting to drop Holly into.

“I wanted to write a book where Holly got a job as a bodyguard. And that interested me because she’s getting on a little bit in years,” King says in a promotional video for “Never Flinch.” “She’s in her 50s or maybe even the early 60s by now. She’s a very quiet person. She’s [an] insecure person. But she’s also brave. And that particular contrast really fascinated me. And so I wanted to put her in a situation where she had to become a bodyguard for a famous person. Holly, instead of a big, strong guy, you know. A little woman who is about 120 pounds soaking wet and who’s always afraid she’s going to do the wrong thing, that her zipper’s gonna come undone, who had a hard job in high school — you know, somebody who’s really got an inferiority complex. But, at the same time, she’s extremely smart; she’s got a lot in the way of deductive reasoning. When it comes to intuition, she’s got that kind of divinity going to her. I just like Holly!”

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Dating back to the very first crime novel — so basically, the Bible — we’ve been positioned to envison heroes as being men, and not just your average everyday man, but a man who knows more than everyone else and can move mountains with the raise of his eyebrow, if for no other reason than he was born a man and that’s what men are supposed to do. But even in fiction, the ability to suspend our disbelief there is getting harder and harder because, as the billboard behind that famous Kurt Cobain photo reads, men don’t protect you anymore. A new kind of hero, as depicted in King’s recent novels, is more than just a curious setup for readers or a way to freshen up a genre, it’s a practical solution to answering the question, “Who is gonna save us now?” When a millennia of men have flat out taken no interest in performing in the capacity we’ve been raised to believe they could, or would.

And in a landscape of tropes bred into us that bleed into all manner of media, it’s inspirational to read about someone like Holly, who knows full well all the societal and personal hangups that are, by nature and nurture, roadblocks between her and what she knows at her essence she is capable of doing, but finds a way to accomplish what she needs to, and wants to, regardless. That’s my favorite brand of “kicking ass,” and as a fan of Stephen King’s for just about my whole life, I’m glad he’s on the same page.

A poster advertising “Never Flinch” by Stephen King is displayed at Simon and Schuster publishing during the London Book Fair at Olympia Exhibition Centre on March 12, 2025, in London, England. (John Keeble/Getty Images)Throughout “Never Flinch,” Holly doubts her ability to be brave enough to do what needs to be done to protect her client as a bodyguard and to help her detective friend track down this killer, but that doubting of her own courage never comes with even a moment’s thought that she’ll give up trying. 

Traveling city to city with the abortion rights influencer, McKay, she struggles with the dynamic between herself as a quiet person and the bold and in-your-face nature of this woman who is now her boss, for the duration of the assignment. She doesn’t know how to stand up to McKay and earn her respect. And she doesn’t know how to tell McKay that the way she’s treating her assistant, Corrie, is not just rude, but abusive.

King writes in the book, “Holly has faced a loaded gun; on at least two occasions, she has faced creatures for which there is no scientific explanation. It’s not courage she lacks, it’s the fundamental self-worth necessary to call someone out on their hurtful behavior. She may never be a person who can do that. It’s a deeper character flaw than not wanting to be seen in a swimsuit, and she doesn’t know how to fix it.”

And (spoiler alert) Holly never does have a big blow out with McKay where she puts her in her place, saying all the perfectly worded, cut you to the quick things. The sort of clever monologue we fantasize in the shower about delivering to someone who makes a hobby out of treating us like crap. What she does instead is save her life. A couple of times. And does McKay appreciate it? Well, she says that she does, but that’s not really the point. The point is that Holly knew what was right and had occasion to do what was right, and did it. Not to win McKay over, because some people just can’t be, but because her compass was pointed north and she followed it, regardless of how shaky the hand holding it was or who was trying to rip it from her hand and chuck it into the bushes. She didn’t flinch.

Holly isn’t cocky about being amazing at her job or continually dealing with and working through her own issues to do what needs to be done. In fact, her inner monologue in one tense chapter is: “Think, you stupid ineffectual bit*h, think!” And it would seem like a weird flex to relate but, really . . . who amongst us?

I spend a lot of time worrying about how to better come across as professional and someone who is deserving of respect. Reading King’s Holly stories helps me ease up on my anxieties surrounding all that because she shows that it’s not about appearing to be something, it’s about actually being it. And if people want to try to bulldoze you and are slow to realize the strength you have within, then those people are on the precipice of a big surprise that will only work in your favor when you accomplish your goals, as they busy themselves with underestimating you.

Holly isn’t Batman. She isn’t the hero that a dangerous and strife-ridden locale in past, present, or future deserves. She’s the hero we need, right now, because she can get the job done and not be a dick about it. I’d pick her. And yeah, even on days when my own inner monologue is saying I’m a stupid, ineffectual bit*h, I aspire to guard with more care the parts of myself that are a lot like her.