8th Confession

Well. It's the latest in the Women's Murder Club Series, and to be perfectly honest I don't know why I continue reading them. The first four were good. After that they've gone steadily down hill. While this was not quite as disappointing as 7th Heaven, that may have been more because I wasn't expecting much. I have nothing against a little bit of romance in stories at all--I'd be a bit of a hypocrite since most of mine also involve that element. What I do object to is what is allegedly a thriller degenerating into a romance that, while maybe a little better than Mills and Boon, is not a thriller and certainly not what you are led to expect. What takes up a good deal of the story in this case is a romance between Yuki and a doctor, which adds very little, if anything, to the plot, and is summarily extinguished with a random statement. If you've gone to all that trouble to get Yuki and this guy together, who I might add was rather poorly developed and whose name I cannot now recall, please don't end it with such a pathetic excuse. I was incredibly disappointed--it felt contrived, it didn't fit with the rest of the character such as it were, and while I don't think it worth your time to read it, I won't go into the details just in case. Unexpected it was, a good twist it was not. Added to this, there was almost none of the detective work involved normally in the series, or at least in the first few books. There were two murderers, completely unconnected, and either developed would have made a good plot. Both together again felt clumsy and detracted from the interest both the mysterious killer who left no mark, and the curious case of Bagman Jesus, could have excited. In all, it was a pretty poor work, and I doubt I'll be reading the next ones. The trouble is, Lindsay is a really good character, as are Yuki and Claire and Cindy. Unfortunately, they've recently been let down by poor plots and an emphasis on the romance which, I'm sure you'll agree, is out of place in a book called the Women's Murder Club. Where's the murder and mystery solving? It seems to have taken rather a back seat. Wouldn't recommend it, but the truth of the matter is, I enjoyed the first ones so much, that as with the Maximum Ride series which got very poor after the first couple, I'll probably get the next one from the library too. After all, there might be an improvement as there was with the Alex Cross ones, with which Double Cross was certainly a good book. I would rather, to be honest, James Patterson slowed down with the writing and produced fewer books a year but that they were all of a comparable quality to the earlier ones.