Thursday, May 13, 2010

The 9th Judgment by James Patterson

I must admit after the last couple of books in the Women's Murder Club series let me down, I almost didn't get The 9th Judgment.  But since I could get it from the library for free, I figured why not.  And I'm glad I did.  This is the strongest in the series in a long time, easily up there with the earlier books.

Once again, we've got two plots going on here.  The first involves a cat burglar dubbed Hello Kitty.  On one robbery, the mistress of the house winds up dead.  The catch?  Hello Kitty didn't commit the murder, the husband did.  But will the police figure out who really killed the wife?

Meanwhile, a sicko is killing young mothers and their toddler aged children.  Can Lindsay catch him before he kills again?

Both stories were intriguing and kept me turning pages as quickly as I could to find out how things would be resolved.  This being a Patterson book, the chapters were short, so turning pages quickly wasn't a problem.

This was a very Lindsay centric book, with not much page time devoted to the other women of the Women's Murder Club.  I picked this book up because I love the characters so much, so I was sorry not to see more of them.  However, I was so frustrated with the romantic sub-plots involving most of the women in the last book that maybe their absence was a blessing.

I just wish it had left the epilogue out of it.  It was literally tacked on.  It brought up and resolved an extra story, seemingly only to provide us with a bit of a cliffhanger involving Lindsay's career at the police department.  The whole thing wasn't needed and weakened the book.

Overall, I did enjoy it.  Not the strongest in the series, but an enjoyable read.

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