3rd Degree by
James Patterson
pbk out January 05
(Headline)
at £6.99
This is the third in the Women's Murder Club series by Patterson, and we are
promised that one of his heroines is about to die. Quite some come-on! I suppose if
you've got four central characters in a series, you can afford to lose one or two for the
sake of suspense. It's not a luxury given to most crime writers, with a single central
character. But then, you would hardly think a writer of Patterson's calibre needed
anything like that to engineer suspense in the first place.
The story starts explosively enough. Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer is out jogging
when a town house blows up almost in her face. This announces an apparent series of
high profile terrorist murders of prominent business and government people. At each
incident there is a taunting message from a group called August Spies. Boxer's
friends, Chief Medical Officer Claire Washburn, and Assistant DA, Jill Bernhardt,
are rapidly called in. Soon the final member of the Women's Murder Club, journalist
Cindy Thomas, is getting warning messages too. It looks like anti-capitalist terrorists
are out to stop the G8 Summit, threatening more deaths of capitalist blood-suckers if
it is not. Enter Joe Molinari from Homeland Security - clever and good-looking into
the bargain. You just know Lindsay's going to fall for this one. There follows a
helter-skelter rush to solve the mystery of August Spies, and prevent more deaths.
Though there is one death that cannot be prevented, and it forms the key to the whole
puzzle.
This is James Patterson at his best. Those familiar short staccato chapters pile
one on the other, with the next pushing its predecessor out of the way, battling to pull
your attention ever onwards. You won't get any deep philosophical analysis of
character here. You don't expect it. But nevertheless, all the characters are finely
drawn, and the plot is bang up to date. Terror, bombing campaigns, pseudo-leftwing
preaching, ricin poisoning - it's all there. And so is that electric pace that keeps you
awake nights until you've finished the final chapter.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
3rd Degree by
James Patterson
