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Mood: Happy ]
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Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
James Patterson is a publisher’s dream. He produces two hugely popular mystery/thriller series that routinely hit the bestseller lists. Patterson is so popular that he needs co-authors to help push out the pulp that his readers demand. He even makes appearances on Castle.
5th Horsman is the fifth (how appropriate) installment in his Women’s Murder Club series. It finds our four female protagonists dealing with three concurrent cases; a hospital malpractice suit, a murder spree in the same hospital and a series of deaths of young escorts.
And that is the problem with this book. There is too much going on. By packing more action than a Bruckheimer movie into 410 pages, Patterson (and co-author Maxine Paetro) sacrifices things like character development. It would have been a far better book if we had only had the hospital malpractice/hospital murder plot and they left the escort murders for another book.
That being said, this book is a very quick read. With chapters lasting three or four pages at most, a strong reader can plow through this book in less than a day. Not high literature, but a fun way to spend a few hours,most likely on a beach or beside a pool.