Book Review - 8th Confession by James Patterson

8th confession is the eighth book in James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series. The series features a group of women who are successful in a man’s world and who have formed a close bond in the most difficult of circumstances. The main character is Lindsay Boxer, a detective in the San Francisco Police Department and her best friends are: Claire Washburn, the city’s chief medical examiner; Cindy Thomas, hot reporter for the city’s newspaper; and Yuki Castellano, a state prosecutor.

8th Confession sees the club pitted against a brutal killer who is stalking the rich and famous. Lindsay is under pressure because the SFPD is bottom of the league for unsolved murders and the newest victims are all high profile people with families that have plenty of clout in the city. Aside from this, reporter Cindy stumbles across a less high profile, but arguably more interesting case when the local homeless hero Jesus Bagman is found brutally executed. Both of the women need their friends to help them solve these equally disturbing cases, but can they pull together at the crucial moment or are their own personal agendas going to tear the group apart?

I couldn’t put this book down. It is James Patterson at his page turning, edge of your seat best. That is not to say the book was perfect, because there were a few things that I found irritating about the book, but none of these things was big enough to hamper my overall enjoyment of the story.
If you have read the previous seven books in the series, you will be well aware of each of the main characters and many of the sub-characters. Over the series, Patterson has introduced the reader into the lives of his characters; making you feel as if you know them and making you care about them. In 8th Confession, he continues this style and once again, you are quickly drawn into the world of the Women’s Murder Club. If you haven’t read any of the books in this series before, you can still enjoy this book. The author does give a little background into the characters and at no point would you feel lost or as if you’d missed out on something.

The story, like I said, is full of twists and turns and is really addictive stuff. In fact I finished the book in just one sitting. I always find that this is easy to do with Patterson’s books, mainly because of his short chapters and writing style that make the story run very smoothly and so easy to read. There was just one problem with the story though and that is that it seemed to be two or three different stories running concurrently and at no point did they seem to interweave other than that the characters are best friend so they meet up to discuss their own part of the story if you will. Each of the individual stories was well written and again, kept you turning the pages quickly, but I just felt that they should have all come together a bit better in the climax.

The story is set in San Francisco and Patterson does a fantastic job of describing the place in a way that makes you want to be right there (despite the fact that people are getting horrifically murdered left, right and centre!). At one point Lindsay Boxer and her boyfriend are sat in a restaurant and Patterson did such a good job of selling it that I actually went online to find out if it is a real place. I’m delighted to say that it is and I’m now working on going there!

Overall, I would say that this is a great example of why Patterson has been given the description of being ‘the world’s best thriller writer’. He has really come up trumps with a typical fast paced, addictive thriller here that will have his fans pouring more praise on him as well as it being a great place for Patterson virgins to start.

2 comments:

Julie P said...

This sounds great! I plan on reading the first book in the series within the next month or two. From what I have heard, I will be hooked! Thanks for sharing.....

Casey (The Bookish Type) said...

Hi Deb! Thanks so much for stopping by my blog on the Hop and for following! I really enjoyed reading this review - it sounds like a exciting read! I'm looking forward to following your future posts!

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