Book Review: 11th Hour by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Women's Murder Club #11)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Great stories and writing that keeps the pages flying

Cons: One sub-plot involving Lindsay.

The Bottom Line:

Despite one sub-plot

This book is a strong entry

That will please the fans

Can the Women's Murder Club Solve These Cases at the 11th Hour?

James Patterson and his various co-authors keep cranking out books at a fast rate.  While I only read his Women's Murder Club series, I always enjoy them.  11th Hour is the newest and one of the stronger ones in the series.

The series, mostly co-written with Maxine Paetro, really focuses on Lindsay Boxer, a detective with the San Francisco Police Department's homicide division.  But she has formed a close friendship with three other women who make up the "club" of the series title.  These women are Claire, the medical examiner, Cindy, a reporter, and Yuki, an assistant district attorney.

Someone has started killing the drug dealers ofSan Francisco.  The press has dubbed him Revenge.  But the latest killing was of an undercover cop who had spent years infiltrating the drug dealers.  And the weapon?  It was stolen from the police evidence locker.

While that case is the focus of the homicide department, and therefore one Lindsay Boxer is working on, she is much more interested in a strange case.  Seven skulls have been found in thegardenofHarry Chandler, a famous movie actor who was under suspicion of killing his wife 10 years ago.  While he was eventually found innocent, the grisly discovery has opened up the case all over again.  Can a pregnant Lindsay solve both cases?

The first few books found all four women focusing on one case and pooling resources.  While that format was best, the fact that we only had two cases here was a nice change of pace.  Both cases were given plenty of time to develop and there was enough suspense to keep me turning pages.  While I would not consider them the most gripping of the series, they certainly kept me wondering who was responsible for both crimes.

What I did love was that this book actually had all the women working together again.  True, it wasn't for much of the book, but that harkened back to the early, glory days of the series, and I enjoyed that.

The books are very much plot driven, although character does sneak in, and I enjoyed what we saw of it as far as the four women and the various other characters we've gotten to know over the course of the series.  One plot took a personal turn for Lindsay, and I liked how that showed off her character.

On the other hand, there was a sub-plot involving her personal life that I absolutely hated.  Not only did Lindsay handle it all wrong, but her friends should have stepped up and handled things differently, too.  When that came up in the book, I felt like yelling at Lindsay, I was that frustrated.

As always, the book is filled with short chapters and lots of dialog, meaning the pages fly by.  Lindsay is our first person narrator most of the time, although occasionally we get bits from the other ladies or a killer just to add some suspense.  It's always an effective combination.

Despite that one sub-plot, I enjoyed 11th Hour.  Fans of the series will eat it up and anxiously find themselves waiting for the next in the series.

Here are the Women's Murder Club Mysteries in order.