: 2nd Chance
Author: James Patterson
If this isn’t a textbook thriller, I don’t know what is. And I mean textbook thriller in the weakest sense. The chapters are extremely short, 2-3 pages, and each ends with a “dramatic” cliffhanger or unexpected news. Except, of course, everything’s so predictable, nothing’s unexpected. Patterson brings back his “Women’s Murder Club” from 1st to Die and seems to think his collection of brilliant women who solve crimes (led by Lt. _) is innovative. He takes far too much time exposing us to the inner lives of his characters, as if we care. Though nothing like this happens in the book, the technique reminds me a lot of the way a TV show will introduce us to a character’s former lover we’ve never met through a two minutes of flashbacks and then tragically kill her off at the end and we’re supposed to be moved. Extremely artificial. Worse than that, the plot of his murder story is dull. It’s serious: the serial killer takes out a lot of people, and there’s a lot of hand-wringing and sighing, but we really don’t care one way or the other. With this kind of writing, death is trivialized. There are also a number of extremely puzzling technical omissions. For instance, the cops have a tape of the killer making a fake 911 call, but later, when they’ve got a suspect but no evidence to arrest him, no one thinks of doing a voice match to the tape! Overall, this is a quick read, and nothing terrible, but it’s predictable, and I liked my surprise ending then the one in the book. Ho hum.
Topic: [/book] |
