Swimsuit by James Patterson

I have read literally every book this guy has published, except 3. 2 are those kids with wings series that don't make a lick of sense to me and the other is a recent one of his called Sail I think, which just annoyed and bored me so much I quit reading. In the past few years, I would say James Patterson has sharply declined in the quality of his books. His strongest, the Alex Cross and Women's Murder Club series, are getting lame and a lot of the stand-alones have started to feel like they were written on a long weekend with the TV on in the background.

There have been 3 I really enjoyed, one stand-alone called Beach Road and the first two in a new series about a widowed NYC cop with 10 adopted kids, Step on a Crack and Run for Your Life.

This all leads up to me having very low expectations for Swimsuit. The first half of the book was a very pleasant surprise because I liked it. It is a faced paced grisly thriller about a serial killer who is paid by a group of sick, twisted international millionaire perverts to make elaborate snuff films of his killings. The latest victim is a Midwestern pre-med student in Hawaii doing a magazine photo shoot. A former cop turned crime reporter from LA goes to Hawaii to cover the story and befriends the girl's parents. The portion of the book in Hawaii is really tense and tight and well-written. The pain of the parents is intense and heart breaking. Then the story moves from Hawaii to LA where the crazy killer shows up at the reporter's door demanding that the reporter tell the killer's story. He wants the reporter to write a best-seller documenting his horrific crime spree. Obviously such a cold blooded psycho is going to be done with this writer eventually and that's where the book falls apart.

The reporter is suddenly an action hero, chasing the killer around Europe, tracking down the perverts in the millionaire's club, and it got stupid, fast. I finished it because I had enjoyed the first part enough to want to know how it turned out, but the ending was almost a fantasy that didn't agree well with the original tone and texture of the story's beginning.

I hope Patterson shapes up soon, I might have to give up on him except for the Bennett series in the future. I read on his website that he's got 2 Alex Cross's coming up before the end of the year, plus a non-fiction thriller about King Tut, and a book called Witch and Wizard in December. That one intrigues me--I don't normally dig the supernatural genres, but in both this book and the most recent Women's Murder Club that came out earlier in the summer, there were some chapters of Witch and Wizard in the back. I read them and the preceding page said that "this is the book I was born to write." Hmm...I might have to read that one to see what all the drama is about!

As for what is next on the Book Geek's pile, let's just say I have 8 library books checked out and I'm 100 pages into the first of those and it is so fun I'm going to go read till my eyes won't stay open another second!

Alpine Advocate by Mary Daheim

This is the first book in the Alpine series about small town newspaper publisher Emma Lord. Mary Daheim also writes the Bed and Breakfast Murder Mystery series and I've read about 9 of those. The B&B books are kind of hit or miss for me--sometimes I love them and other times I just kind of slog through. This is actually the series Daheim wrote first, so my OCD way of reading things in order was a little messed up as far as publishing dates go!

These Alpine books take place in a tiny logging town near Seattle and the first book is about a murder in the local moneyed family. The mystery itself was pretty lame, I saw the motive for the murder after about 45 pages but nobody else figured that out in the book till the end. The killer was less obvious, in fact kind of popped out of nowhere, but it was a little frustrating to see the allegedly smart people missing the point so much. It was very heavy handed in the foreshadowing for the reader to notice that big clue, but stupid that nobody in the story was hit over the head with that same plot hammer!

I will keep reading this series though, because in my experience, in most series like these smaller, laid back niche mystery series, the first book always kind of stinks. They have too much back story to get to and too much groundwork for the town and lead characters so that the mystery part is pretty dumb.

Plus, I find it very relaxing to read these light "Murder She Wrote" type book series. They're always pleasant, have quirky townspeople, fun settings, and I like them for speedy bedtime reading. In this blog you'll see more Alpine, B&B, Tea Shop, Knitting, Needlework, Chocoholic, and numerous other series pop up quite often. Cause that's how I roll.

Stay tuned for: the new James Patterson book, Swimsuit...