James Patterson's novels should make me gain weight
..from snacking while reading his work, yes, but mostly because they are just such sheer fun. He and his co-writers, perhaps sometimes, ghost writers, are constantly turning out books that are just such fast thrill rides, and this is one of my favorites.
Gather the cat for your lap, snuggle in and get ready for a greatly fun novel, just turn in your ticket and put everything on the first page and--go! As with Beach Road, nothing is quite as it appears as we operate on the wonderful straight highway taking us to directly where we wind up, with those clues staring us right in the face, from the title on.
Though missing Alex Cross and the Women's Murder Club, this stand-alone book still is in the canon of just wanting to hug a book because it is so smart and so dancing with words and concepts that lean far over into magic. Why would anyone want to read a book that takes about an hour or so? Because it's nice to be mesmerized. It's nice to see not a book, nor are any of the Patterson books, that is a trick, nor are they just razor edge excitement.
There is every so often warmth in them and though the warmth and endearment don't match Ed McBain's 87th Precinct, they are fine in their own way--moments of sanity before we get back to plotting that is improbable certainly, but who wants fiction for probable alone? The sheer hawk strike that bothers throughout "You've Been Warned" is palpable and ranks right up there in giddy flights, if not literally, as in the first of the series of flying children, "When the Wind Blows."
So what are you waiting for? You have been warned by Mr. Patterson and co. There is no finer plotter now who does sleek and hard edged and daring and parboiled thrillers quite the way they do. Surprises are incredibly difficult to pull off in books or movies--you want to guess, you don't want to be had, but I never feel that way with Patterson's novels. I'm directed down that third rail and I know I am in the hands of a writer and co. who respect the intelligence of their readers, who simply after all would like a good time with a book now and then.
And not surprisingly, one learns lots of things from his novels that always seem to fail in movies based on them or a TV series of The Women's Murder Club--after all, we need those short chapters, those breathless words thrown at us as we page race, and endings that can floor ya, as only the printed word can. It is terribly serious in his world, and we do have horrible things happen to people, and animals, we grow easily to love, but he and his co writers envelop it and make it easier, manageable, because they give us what the world around us does not, hope.
As one critic who wrote of Paterson, "Write faster." Please.
