Step On A Crack by James Patterson

I managed to start my book reading during lunch hour. And just recently, I finished reading another James Patterson’s book – Step On A Crack.

The story was about a high profile hostage holding of VIPs in a high profile function. The story began with what seems to be an accident-murder of a VVIP and eventually led to the situation mentioned above. The “gang” demanded certain ransom for the release of the hostages but the way the gang worked puzzled everyone including a detective-negotiator, the main hero of the story.

What was nice for me about this book was that the character of the this detective. Not only he battled with this crazy gang but also he had a dying wife due to cancer and with almost a dozen of him little adopted children (the eldest being 12, if I’m not mistaken) to take care. It’s a heart warming and touching scenarios that this detective chose not to lose himself in front of his children and keep it holding till the end. I was full of emotion when reading the part where the wife was about to die and how he and the children react to that fact.

For me, although there’s curiosity of knowing why the gang did all these, I was actually more interested to know more about the detective’s family after the passing of his wife. The children portrayed in the story took care of each other and were very very obedient to their parents. Eventually for me, the crime story became the secondary issue while reading this book.

Not much a suspense in this book. The plot was pretty “standard” with not much of twist. But the heart warming story in the detective’s family was a good one to give this book a try.

 

See How They Run by James Patterson

I finished another James Patterson’s book. I was actually wondering what could the title means? See How They Run.

My first thought was actually some character in the book running away from some bounty hunter that kinda thing. But I was quite wrong. The story centered about the Jews’ retribution to the ex-Nazis soldiers as the Jews suffered through the Holocaust during the WWII. The revenge took place on the first day of the 1980 Olympic in Moscow, USSR.

The Dachau Two is the Jewish group comprised of several experts and professionals the plan the retribution. But their plan was something much bigger than their original intention.

I thought the story was interesting. It started with lots of commotion here and there and unexplained incident. That made me wanted to continue reading to find out the whys. The ending was pretty good. I thought the ending was brilliant and fair.

If you are into the Jews and Nazis thing, you may want to consider reading this book. Otherwise, you may give it a pass.

 

Midnight Club by James Patterson

I finished another James Patterson’s book. This one is called Midnight Club.

Midnight Club is about a club where the members are dark society boss around the world. They organise and control the big time crime around the world such as drugs, prostitution and so on.

When there are bad guys, there will be some good guys to balance the story around. The good guys are two very committed cops each using their own style to take down the main figure of the Midnight Club.

I thought the plots are pretty standard for a cop versus criminal lord. Nothing particularly special. The cops want to take down the bad guys but bad guys threaten the cops’ loved one and ….. you know how the story go.

However, the book did reveal (I’m not sure whether this Midnight Club is real or purely fiction) about possible organised crime around the world that may miss our eyes. There’s this existence of the normal rule and the “street” rule. Have a go at this book if you are interested in this kind of stories.

 

Judge and Jury by James Patterson

You can get pretty emotional after reading this book.

This book portray how a mob-mafia can be so powerful that no authority can handle him. Not even the judge and the jury. While reading this book, I was flooded with emotion of deep anger on the mob character. He kills for fun. He rapes for fun. He is the “baddest” guy you can imagine as portrayed by the author of this book. How do you deal with this mob even the judicial system fail to do so?

The plot is pretty much standard. Not so much of a big twist. I get the ending that I want. That at least give me the satisfaction of how the author deal with the mob. Read it if you really have nothing else interesting to read. A so-so for me.

 

The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader (based on Robert Ludlum’s character – Jason Bourne)

Finally! I managed to finish this book. This book is pretty thick by my standard as compared to other James Patterson and John Grisham book that I had read. Anyway, I managed to finish it and it was fantastic. With the famous Jason Bourne being made into movies, it’s easier to imagine Matt Damon as Bourne in this book while I read it. It brings out the ‘real’ feeling while I’m reading it.

The plot of this book centered around Jason Bourne’s life after the Bourne Ultimatum. When everything is thought to be over in Bourne Ultimatum, things in Bourne Legacy just get more and more complicated. How so? After the Bourne trilogy, Bourne wanted to live a normal life. How normal his life can be?

The story began with the murder of the people Bourne trusted and treasured. After that, everything seems to be fallen to pieces for Bourne. The plot moves so fast that at times I hardly have time to breath. Then come the twist of another person so called Bourne’s son. The emergence of “Bourne’s son” affected Bourne very much emotionally as he still struggle with his amnesia. Is this “Bourne’s son” really his son? What’s the story behind it? Why the people that Bourne trusts and treasures were murdered?

All these questions are found in this book. I love the plot very much. I do hope it can be turned into a movie. I highly recommend the reading of this book. At least it blew me away. Lots of twist which can be expected in the world of secret services. The ending is good. Is a little emotional but it’s worth finishing such way. Like what my friend says and I totally agree…..Matt Damon will always be my Jason Bourne. Picture that while you read, you will surely enjoy the book as much as I do.

 

Honeymoon by James Patterson

Don’t be fooled by the title. There’s nothing much honeymoon related to the story (maybe a word or two). I thought this story was just so-so. This the latest edition of James Patterson’s novel that I’ve completed.

The story is centered around a beautiful lady, Nora who has her dark secret. Her secrets involved around her husbands. Yes husbands with ’s’. This dark secret somehow interest the FBI. Why would FBI took interest in Nora?

For me, there’s not much suspense from this book. There are some twist and turn but it didn’t blew me away. But the ending was pretty satisfying in a way. At least it clearly tell why and I really mean why the FBI is interested Nora.

Pretty fair entertaining value.

 

Beach Road by James Patterson

Personally, I thought the standalone book James Patterson wrote was pretty interesting and entertaining. The first of his many standalone book that I read was Cradle and All and it was superb.

I’ve just finished reading Beach Road. I highly recommend it. At first glance, the story is just about lawyer defending his client and yada yada yada.

Why Beach Road as the title? Well, the whole story happened at the beach-road neighborhood. What could happened at such a scenic neighborhood?

What’s interesting about this book are twofolds. Firstly, the story is told by sort of narration style from several key person point of view. It’s sort of like the TV-series Boomtown style. Secondly, the story was built up very nicely with a very very bang ending. I was eager to finish the story to find out what would happened to the defendant but instead I’m served with something even more at the end of the book. To find out, I strongly suggest and recommend you have a read of this book.

 

6th Target by James Patterson

Finally I finished reading another James Patterson’s book. This time is his Women’s Murder Club (WMC) series book. In fact this WMC has been made into TV series and showing in the US now.

6th Target indicated this is the 6th WMC book by James Patterson. In fact the way James Patterson named this WMC series is quite interesting. He started with 1st To Die, 2nd Chance, 3rd Degree, 4th of July, 5th Horsemen and 6th Target. In this book, 3 cases were written i.e. (which I termed) The Ferry Killing Spree, The Child-Nanny Kidnap and The Noise Sensitive Killer.

While I was reading, I was wondering why this book is called 6th Target. Readers will realised why at the end of the book. For me, the story line wise is quite standard for any crime stories. The only thing kept me reading is to find out the reason why all those murders/crimes are committed.

 

Double Cross by James Patterson

I started reading James Patterson’s book when I accidentally pickup one of his book called, “Cradle and All”. And that book kept me reading non-stop for the story was mysterious and full of suspense. After that, I decided to read his books starting with this famous Alex Cross series. I read all his 12 books prior to this latest one starting with “Along Came A Spider” till “Cross”. And this 13th installment is called “Double Cross” (I was googling and found that the 14th one will come out soon entitled “Cross Country”).

For those who have read Patterson’s Alex Cross series, you will find out that after reading 3-4 of this novels, you will find almost same plot been used all over again and again. A serial maniac killer doing killing spree and Alex Cross is summoned or forced or reluctantly led to solve the case. Well, you’ll find the same kind of plot in this book. The only difference I would say is the way the killer kills.

You may wonder why I still continue reading his book if the plot is so predictable. Well, I guess the reason I give would explain why Alex Cross series is still being written. The ending of all his book left a very suspense question mark for curious reader (like me) to continue wanting to know what would happen next. Like this “Double Cross”, yes again…the ending is quite a cliffhanger and reader would want to wait for the next book to find out what’s going to happen. This I can give an analogy of watching Hong Kong TVB series. You know that the plot of the TVB series is always like “this”, like “that” and so on but you’ll want to watch the whole 20 or 30 or 40 or even 50 episodes! just to see the ending. Well, Alex Cross series is just like that.

I guess this won’t discourage people from reading James Patterson’s book. But if you want to give it a try, I would recommend you to start with his “Cradle and All”.

Anyway, to give a bit of proper review for this book, every character has a villain. And yes, the “famous” can’t-die villain is back. In addition to a new serial killer, Alex Cross has to not only solve the case but deal with his past villain.

 

Playing For Pizza by John Grisham

This is a new section where I will review on novels/books that I read. In fact I read quite a number of them in 2007 averaging about 2 /month and that was also before this blog started. And when the blog started, I was in the midst of coming to Melbourne and no more books till last week. One of my favorite author, John Grisham with his quite latest book entitled, Playing for Pizza. For sneak preview to this book, you can go to the official website of John Grisham for 2 chapters of sneak preview.

When I first saw the title, I translated the title literally. Playing for pizza, which towards the end of the book does talk about playing for pizza literally. I would say this book is about having a second chance and be passionate about the things you like. This book is about an NFL player, Rick made a mess in the American league. With the league being so unforgiving, he was out of contract to play anymore. His manager though managed to find him a team that would want him and that is an American Football team in Italy. Yup, in ITALY. That’s when the title comes in, playing for pizza. Rick will be playing for the pizza famous country, Italy.

I don’t want to reveal much of the details But what I can say is that throughout the whole adaptation process, Rick learn a lot about himself, the game, the people around him and how he was given a second chance to make it big again. It’s a very touching process and more importantly for me, I can feel the excitement of American Football (though till now I still don’t understand the game and will not try to understand the game).

If you know Mr. Grisham’s writing style in his past 19 books (I read all the 19 and the 20th which is this one), his ending is normally very abrupt and cliffhanging, which prompt the readers to imagine the best possible scenarios. Hence, I was quite nervous towards the end of the book expecting similar trend. To my surprise, the ending this time was quite reasonable and I like it. But what caught my attention which prompted me to blog on this book review is the author’s note at the end of the book, which I have extracted and highlighted in BOLD ITALIC.

“………….The Panthers are a bunch of tough Italians who play for the love of the game, and for the pizza afterward.………..” (John Grisham)

For the love of the game, the Italians get together and play and enjoy the pizza afterward. It makes me ponder and reflect upon the bonding and friendship one can forge over the love of sports and/or games. In Malaysian context I think it would sound more like “Playing for Mamak’s Maggi Goreng” after a game of futsal, which is quite true where after a futsal game most of Malaysian will turn to Mamak for a time of relaxation and bonding of friendship.