Patterson, James, Tenth Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)

July 25, 2011

Patterson, James, Tenth Anniversary, 2011 (with Maxine Paetro)

Spoilers in this review: Some.

This book came to me through a book club. My only other experience with Patterson has been books on tape listened to in the car. Tenth Anniversary is one in a series of books involving the “Women’s Murder Club,” which has been adapted for television, I think. The Murder Club is made up of four women—a prosecuting attorney, a police detective, a medical examiner, and a newspaper reporter. This book has a mystery for each of them, with only tangential overlap, in some cases. I found this distracting, not being in tune with the format from prior reading.

There were many distractions—mainly the insanely short chapters, often hardly a full page of text. With the short chapters and jumping story lines, I felt sort of breathless most of the time. The book was episodic, shallow, and predictable. It jangled one of my pet peeves about modern mysteries—I knew that at least one of the Murder Club members would become a victim. In this case, the reporter got kidnapped by the serial rapist, an event that had been telegraphed chapters earlier. I suppose having the mystery solver placed in deadly peril is a way to engage the reader’s emotions, but I don’t want those emotions. The impact of crime and its investigation has enough of an impact on those who deal with it without subjecting them to criminal victimization, and without putting the reader psychologically in the victim position as well.

This book was also burdened with the need to go backward in time to catch up new readers and refresh old readers of how the four heroes got together in the first place and what’s been going on in their lives. That’s another distraction to me, and takes away from the main action. I would prefer that each book be self-contained. That’s just me, who cut my eye-teeth on the great mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers. The murder club was also intermarrying with the men in each other’s lives. Quaint.

The short chapters and the addition of not one but two previews of coming publications makes me think that this book didn’t come in long enough and caught the publisher unawares. Really, about 100 pages could have been knocked out of this book. Then it would not have fit the model for a modern mystery. The reader must have her value! Who knows? I just enjoy speculating.

Best bits: The lesbian biker queen couple wanting to adopt.

Main complaint: Thin content. There just wasn’t much there there.

Hidden gifts: The attorney’s story was the most compelling, capturing my attention with its twists and turns.

Physical description: Book-sized, although thicker than it needed to be; the main book was 395 frothy pages long; bonus content from Patterson’s Now You See Her and Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (a children’s text) ran to about 50 pages.