Book Review: The 20th Victim by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Women's Murder Club #20)

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.