Reading Freely

Honeymoon
© 2005 James Patterson
400 pages

Nora Sinclair is the perfect seductress: utterly charming, beautiful beyond compare, and a classy success in the world of interior design. She fills the homes of the wealth with superior decor, and the hearts of wealthy men with longing for her. Then she kills them.

Not at first, mind you. First comes the sex — lots of sex. Depending on long it takes her to find and access your bank account so she can arrange for it to be wired to her various offshore accounts, a given victim might enjoy weeks or even months of the best sex of their lives.  They might even live long enough to get married to her, provided gifts of expensive jewelry and cars distract her ambitions. Eventually, though,  she strikes. Fortunately for the ranks of bachelors, even black widows are prey for someone else.

This was my second Patterson novel, though it falls short of the fair-ish expectations I had of Patterson after reading Judge & Jury. I couldn’t take it seriously. There are two main characters, Nora and Craig Reynolds, a man who introduces himself as an insurance agent. Patterson uses the first-person for Reynolds alone, which would lead readers to think he’s the main character — but most of the attention goes to Nora, whose breasts and legs the authors are fond of describing. There’s also a third character, “The Tourist”, who stands in the shadows and exchanges threats with other people standing in the shadows and sometimes kills pizza boys. Eventually his story intersects with Nora’s and Craig’s, though their final confrontation fizzles out before it explodes. Less Honeymoon, more Coitus Interuptus.

Essentially this is a sex novel where the characters take themselves seriously. The dialogue is painfully flat, which I’m starting to think is characteristic of Patterson’s writing since Judge and Jury‘s writing wasn’t exactly ample itself.  There are a couple of moments in which the ‘hero’ hunting Nora is likable, but he mostly comes off as a tool who I almost HOPED would die. There were other disappointments, too, like well-set up dramatic confession which….told the readers what they already knew, unless they were skipping the scenes of Nora and her mother to get back to a scene where Nora is in bed or walking around naked.

With the possible exception of the 16-book Left Behind series by Jerry Jenkins and Timothy LaHaye, this is the shallowest bit of fiction I’ve ever read. I used it to kill some time yesterday afternoon, though I’ll probably have forgotten about it in a month or so.

Judge & Jury
© 2006 James Patterson
432 pages

Neil Pellisante is a star witness in the sweetest trial of his life. For years, he hunted the powerful and cruel mobster Dominic Cavella,  pouncing on the monstrous mafioso when Cavella dared to appear at his niece’s wedding. The case against him is ironclad. The great cat and mouse game is over —  well, not quite. Cavella may be behind bars, but he has the money to buy ample force, and the audacity to use it in direct assaults on courtrooms and juries. As the bodycount rises, Pellisante’s frustration rises — but if he can’t take down Pellisante inside the courtroom, maybe there are ways to take of the problem outside it.  Thus begins a novel of malice, loss, and revenge spanning multiple continents.

I’ve never read James Patterson before, though his name comes up along with other pop-fiction authors like John Grisham. I think that comparison is unfair, given that Grisham’s thrillers often have a point or issue to confront the reader with. Judge & Jury is something like a Walker, Texas Ranger episode. The bad guy is Very Bad, completely irredeemable — a man who burns babies to torture their relatives.  Thus, I didn’t mind if Pellisante went outside the law to take him down. Pellisante and a surviving juror make for sympathetic characters, especially as they try to toe the line between justice and vengeance. The  story’s resolution fulfills the theme.  I generally enjoyed Judge & Jury, though it’s more light reading than anything else. I don’t know how the publishers justify charging $35.00 for it, though!