“1st to Die” by James Patterson, featuring inspector Lindsay of San Francisco, first book of “Women’s Murder Club” series.
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5). I liked listening to this book as an audiobook, it was good entertainment, not terribly enriching, somehow clichéed. I see it’s got an average rating above 4, which is probably reasonably within it’s genre, and I guess if you’re into fast-paced mysteries/thrillers it will be a perfect fit. I will only give it 3 stars however, since I’m not that fond of the genre, and read it in order to ‘cross-read’ for other genres and also to read James Patterson for the first time. It was a good experience, but I will probably read a lot of other authors and books before reading another James Patterson book.
Plot: Inspector Lindsay investigates a brutal murder of a newly married couple, while juggling health and love challenges.
View point: Apart from the first-person view-point of Inspector Lindsay, we also follow other characters from a third-limited point of view. This works well, I think, as a mystifying device.
Pros:
Inspector Lindsay, the main character, and first-person view-point of most chapters, has a catchy ‘voice’. She is likeable and I got emotionally attached to her, a few passages gave me misty eyes.
It’s a real page-turner, with a clever plot, with lots of between-chapter cliff-hangers.
The short chapters, more than a hundred in total, gave it a really high pace.
Cons:
There were some cliches in the language of the book, particularly through adverbs and consecutive adjectives, sometimes too much telling instead of showing.
There’s not much of a story arc for the third-person view-point characters.
