By James Patterson & Maxine Paetro. Women’s Murder Club #14. Grade: B
14th Deadly Sin
The Women’s murder club returns in their 14th installment to deal with yet another set of murderers and ruffians.
Detective Lindsay Boxer and her three best friends are back and recovering from the events that pushed them all to the edge.
After her near-death experience, Yuki is seeing her life from a new perspective and is considering a change in her law career. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Cindy has healed from her gunshot wound and has published a book on the infamous serial killers she helped to bring down. Lindsay is just happy that the gang are all still in one piece. But a new terror is sweeping the streets of San Francisco. A gang dressed as cops are ransacking the city, and leaving a string of dead bodies in their wake. Lindsay is on the case to track them down and needs to discover whether these killers could actually be police officers. Maybe even cops she already knows…
This book is the usual Patterson drill. Lindsay has a suddenly an onslaught of cases which, as her intuition says, are connected in some way. Cindy and Richard Conklin are back together and we see their happy phase of getting back together. Yuki, on the other hand, is out of her honeymoon mood and gets serious about a job that’ll have her suing the state police department where her husband works. Domestic tussles follow and Yuki continues to fight for her client, leading to a break not just for her dead client but also Lindsay’s cases. Poor Claire, she has been left out in this book just as the case with the last book, and is given a few seconds of appearances in two-three scenes.
The story is slightly better than the last one. At least there are less frustrating scenes (the one where Lindsay and Joe manage to get stuck with a psycho on two separate occasions, alone against their better judgement (against anybody’s better judgement, if you ask me) seems too immature for two cops with years of experience.) Yuki’s story, on the other hand, cliched though it may be, was interesting to read. It was a typical feel-good courtroom scenario that every Law and Order or The Practice fan likes.
This book is a regular fare for the Patterson fan while serious action fans might want to skip it. A quick read for a Journey or will help you make up if you are way behind schedule in your Goodreads reading challenge!
