Title: 19th Christmas
Author: James Patterson
Series: Women’s Murder Club #19
Synopsis (from bn.com):
As the holidays approach, Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends in the Women’s Murder Club have much to celebrate. Crime is down. The medical examiner’s office is quiet. Even the courts are showing some Christmas spirit. And the news cycle is so slow that journalist Cindy Thomas is on assignment to tell a story about the true meaning of the season for San Francisco.
Then a fearsome criminal known only as “Loman” seizes control of the headlines. Solving crimes never happens on schedule, but as this criminal mastermind unleashes credible threats by the hour, the month of December is upended for the Women’s Murder Club. Avoiding tragedy is the only holiday miracle they seek.
My thoughts: I’d love to say this series is getting better and better, but it is just not the case. In fact, this series seems to be getting weaker and weaker to me. When it takes me a week to get through a James Patterson book, I know there is trouble.
The last couple books in this series have just been losing their steam. 19th Christmas seemed very disjointed and basically just boring. I understand the author has books in the series that really focus on just one character of the Women’s Murder Club – in this case mostly Lindsey Boxer, but they are much better when all the women are featured and what they are working on fits together on the same case in some way.
In this book, the main story of Lindsey Boxer solving the big case was boring in and of itself, and then the story of Cindy the journalist writing some random story was completely disjointed from everything else and just seemed to go away instantly having no purpose to the story or the book.
Yuki – the DA – and Claire – the ME – were hardly featured at all. And don’t get me started on the odd epilogue that had absolutely no place – random, random, random.
Overall, boring, seemingly forced, and disappointing! Ugh! I hate to even suggest that perhaps its time for this series to fade away!!!
Well, happy reading!
Books Are Life,
Heather
Books Are Life - Vita Libri 