1st to Die by James Patterson

Since Outi recommended James Patterson's books I've had them on the radar waiting for a suitable vacant spot in my reading schedule to try them out. Unfortunately my list has been pretty full, but since I started using Audible and listening to audiobooks I've downloaded some of his books on my iPod. For some reason my first pick was one of his less known book 1st do Die, the first book in the The Women's Murder Club series. The story is about four women - one San Fransisco PD instector, one reporter, one coroner and one district attourney - come together to solve a case of a serial killer after newlyweds.

Patterson has a strange habit of making his chapters very short, sometimes cutting a scene in the middle, for dramatic effect, maybe - but personally I didn't see the point. But this short and to the point style makes me think of CSI or Law and Order - in fact, the whole book with it's plot reminds me of an episode in a TV series. Like chapters are scenes that are cut off by commercials, and even the characters are TV-like. Which is interesting - most of my favourite crime authors are British and their style is very much more traditional and book-like.

What bothers me most about this book though are the women. I think writing believable women characters, especially strong women, is very difficult for male writers, and Patterson is no exception. He gets everything slightly wrong, nothing major, but somehow it never feels quite right. What they think, how they behave, and especially how they interact - it all looks like he's been watching a bad sitcom with some groovy chicks and mimicked the dialog from that. I like the idea of four women coming together to solve the murders, but how they meet and becomes best friends in space of couple of hours is in my opinion just plain unbelievable. (All my major relationships, with both men and women, have been cultivated across a long periods of time, trust has been earned and given... how for example an inspector comes to trust a reporter in an hour and a day later calls her her closest friend is just... stupid.)

But it's a crime novel, and plot is what makes or breaks a book. And the plot is clever - it starts out as pretty conventional serial killer story, but there are some nice twists to the story that keeps the attention up until the end... possibly even too many twists. I'm going to read at least the next book in the series - this book read like a prelude, so I'm interested in seeing how the characters develop.

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