Left to right: Justine Lupe and Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney
Holly Gibney is a character created by Stephen King, featuring as both a supporting player and a central protagonist in King's more crime oriented stories. Introduced in the "Bill Hodges" trilogy, Holly is a sensitive, empathic, and probably neurodivergent private investigator, with obsessive compulsive tendencies and anxiety issues.She has been played by Justine Lupe in the television adaptation of Mr. Mercedes, and by Cynthia Erivo in HBO's version of The Outsider. Lupe also provided narration on the audiobook version of Holly, reprising her role in the process.
Appearances:
- The Bill Hodges trilogy:
- The Outsider
- If It Bleeds
- Holly
Tropes:
- Age Lift: In the source material, Holly is middle-aged from her first book, moving into her fifties by the time of Holly. Both screen adaptations dramatically de-age her, placing Holly at around her early thirties as of Mr. Mercedes, likely as a means to fully establish her as a surrogate daughter to Hodges in the first three books.
- Ambiguous Disorder: She is clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum, with Mr. Mercedes establishing Holly's propensity for stimming (an umbrella term for self-soothing habits common to people on the spectrum) and Finders Keepers describing her tics as "Asperger's-like". King never diagnoses Holly outright in the text, but both of Holly's actresses have openly played her as autistic.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being probably the single kindest character in her author's entire body of work, Holly is not a woman to be pushed too far, and boasts by far the highest success rate of any character in King's detective series when it comes to killing or incapacitating villains, by means of varying and sometimes spectacular brutality: Brady Hartsfield (head caved in, permanently disabled), the Outsider (head caved in again), the Ondowski-Thing (hurled down an elevator shaft), Roddy Harris (throat slashed), and Emily Harris (neck snapped).
- Breakout Character: Other than Roland and Flagg, Holly is probably the most popular, ubiquitous character in King's entire bibliography, appearing in no fewer than six novels. This wasn't even originally by design, either; per the author himself, Holly was meant to be no more than an incidental character in Mr. Mercedes, but ended up appealing to him so strongly that she worked her way up to eventually becoming The Hero of King's detective mythos.
- Genre Shift: The books in which Holly appears are somewhat genre-fluid. For instance, Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers are fairly grounded crime thrillers, whereas End of Watch introduced more paranormal elements such as telepathy. The Outsider and It It Bleeds steer things into more familiar Horror territory that King is best known for (both stories feature horrific shapeshifting monsters), although Holly does return the series to its non-supernatural roots.
- Nice Girl: Especially coming from an author known for almost exclusively writing characters who range from morally complex to outright repulsive, Holly is just fundamentally good. She has her moments of frustration and anger - sometimes rage, as the villains and assorted dicks of her mythos discover - but Holly is a woman who genuinely doesn't understand cruelty and ignorance, stubbornly treating everyone she meets, be they pleasant or unpleasant themselves, with the same basic standard of politeness and respect.
- No Social Skills: Partly because of her questionable upbringing and partly because of her specific combination of neurodivergent quirks, Holly remains a bit lost in social situations throughout her whole series. Though she is always perfectly, almost obsessively polite toward everyone she meets, especially clients, Holly is obviously uncomfortable around all but a very select few people, mostly leaving friendly conversation to her friends - first Hodges, then later Jerome and Pete.
- Private Investigator: She inherits the Finders Keepers detective agency from Bill Hodges after the conclusion of End of Watch.
