Monday, 2 March 2015

Book ~ "Unlucky 13" (2014) James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

From Goodreads ~ San Francisco Detective Lindsay Boxer is loving her life as a new mother. With an attentive husband, a job she loves, plus best friends who can talk about anything from sex to murder, things couldn't be better. 

Then the FBI sends Lindsay a photo of a killer from her past, and her happy world is shattered. The picture captures a beautiful woman at a stoplight. But all Lindsay sees is the psychopath behind those seductive eyes: Mackie Morales, the most deranged and dangerous mind the Women's Murder Club has ever encountered.

There is a belly bomber on the loose ... people are ingesting bombs in their food which explode, needless to say killing them.  Lindsay Boxer is a police officer and she and her partner, Richie, are assigned to finding the killer. In the meantime, one of Lindsay's best friends is getting married.  And finally a serial killer who had escaped (from a previous book) has been spotted ... is she coming to settle a score with Lindsay?

With the gazillions of books that James Patterson has written, this is the first one of his I've read.  It is the 13th in the Women's Murder Club series but it works as a stand alone.

There were three different storylines and they all involved Lindsay.  How did that girl sleep at night with so much going on?!

I enjoyed the writing style and it went at a good pace.  I liked the short choppy chapters.  The point of view shifted ... it was first person perspective when the focus was on Lindsay and third person perspective when the focus was on everyone else ... but it was easy to figure out.

I found a couple of the storylines farfetched, though ... especially the one involving pirates.  Yes, pirates in 2014!  That was my least favourite storyline.  And I wasn't sure what the point was of having the domestic violence shooting ... it didn't tie into any of the storylines.  And finally, though people were arrested for planting the belly bombs, were others involved?  Why did they do it?  I found the ending to that storyline really abrupt and obviously left me with questions.

I thought it was an okay book and the characters were likable so I will eventually go back and read the others in the series.

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