Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Strong story
Cons: Ending rushed
The Bottom Line:
Assassin at work
Keeps pages turning quickly
Patterson thriller
Rehearsal for Assassination?
It took me a little longer than normal to get the newest
Women’s Murder Club book this time around.
With the libraries closed right now, they didn’t get the listing for The 20th Victim up as quickly as normal, and many of us were
watching for it. Fortunately, I still got
on the waiting list fairly early for the ebook version, so I didn’t have to
wait too long to visit Lindsay and the rest of the crew.
Getting fast food turns out to be fatal for one man who is
taken out by a sniper as he is leaving the drive through on morning. His wife in the seat next to him is left
physically unharmed. It’s a perfect sniper
shot. While Lindsay gets the case as
part of her job as a San Francisco homicide detective, reporter Cindy gets a
key clue. Someone wrote “Rehearsal” in
the dust of the car’s back window. The
question is, rehearsal for what?
Meanwhile, Claire has some scary news of her own to deal
with, and Yuki has to prosecute the case of a teenage getaway driver who won’t
flip on the real criminals. Even
Lindsay’s husband, Joe, has a case of his own when his college roommate thinks
his father was murdered.
It’s no surprise to fans of the series that this book is
filled with several storylines that weave in and out of each other. In this case, I think there was one story too
many since the book had to rush to wrap them up. The easy candidate is the repetitive plot
that we saw earlier in the series. Or
maybe it should have shortened something in the middle. Either way, the climax is definitely rushed
for all the stories. Along the way, the
pace never lagged, however, and I was always happily turning pages when I had
time to read.
As always, the characters are relatively thin. We’ve spent enough time with them that we
certainly care about them, but the focus is on the plot, and that doesn’t leave
us much time to delve into the character’s personalities or see much growth.
Despite my picking on the negatives, I enjoyed this
book. Most of those negatives are baked
in when I pick up a book in this series.
The plots were definitely some of the stronger in the series, and I
enjoyed seeing how things unfolded. I
kept my teaser as brief as possible since discovering some of the early twists in
the story was definitely some of the most fun.
Fans of James Patterson will be pleased with The 20th Victim. It’s another fun page turner
with familiar characters.
Check out the rest of the Women's Murder Club mysteries.
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