I have read a number of James Patterson books in the
past both his solo work and his co-authored stuff so my hopes were fairly high
as I have not read one of his novels that I have disliked. This particular
novel was on my bookshelf for a while so I have finally given it a go.
Plot:
Nick Daniels is
a journalist and he has the task of interviewing a reclusive former baseball
pitcher. At dinner he is witness to a rather gruesome murder…..
There was something he heard, something which he
hardly listened to but knew it was said – it would be on his Dictaphone…..
The murder has an obvious mob like set up and ordered
killing but something isn’t quite right, it was too obvious, to directly
pointed to one person, something isn’t right can Nick find out what really
happened and stay alive…………….
My thoughts:
In one word – disappointed.
If I had paid full price for the book I would have
been even more disappointed but it only cost me £4.99 from ‘the works’ so not
too bad.
I don’t know if most of the problems with this book
are due to Patterson himself or his co-author Howard Roughman but I hope it
isn’t Patterson.
Whilst the novel isn’t exactly badly written overall the
plot is rather thin and any GCSE English literature student could pick holes in
the plot line. Most of the characters are far too one dimensional even those
who aren’t are at best 1.4 dimensions. With it being written in the first
person it is hard to really get an insight into the other characters as it
focusses about 85% on the central character in the book. I do feel that if this
novel were to be adapted for a film it would be at most 45 minutes long.
As with many of Patterson’s books the chapters are
very short – about three pages. Now for me this does break up the novels rather
limp tension moments with the rest of Nick’s life but it wastes a lot of paper
as the next chapter starts half way down the next page. Still the wasting paper
is only a minor gripe of mine.
The story in its self is frankly just not believable. From
the way the first murder is done and the assassin’s escape (done in the first
few pages – so not much of a spoiler) Nick is in it up to his neck with the mob
– and not just with one mob boss. However, either Nick has a charmed life or
these mobsters are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard and the accuracy
with a gun equivalent to a storm trooper in star wars episode 4. Whilst Nick is
clearly able to live on his wits you would thing that one of the attempts on
his life – and there are many would be successful. In fact at times I actually
found myself wanting him to be killed off if only to be sure they could be no
sequel to this as I found him such an unlikeable character.
Some of the more minor characters were instantly
forgettable and were only used for plot point, well there is nothing really
wrong in that but there were perhaps too many of them. Nick’s pining after his
boss, Courtney, was worse written than I imagine even the direst Mills and Boon
(and no I DON’T read mills and boon).
The ending was far from satisfactory in my opinion and
it was as if the authors wanted the a typical ‘all American happy family now we
have been through this the rest of our life is going to be one long happy ever
after holiday’ frankly when I got to this part I started to want something to
go seriously wrong to cut through the clotted cream saccharine sweet gooey
niceness of it all.
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