10th anniversary

And so The Women's Murder Club continues on, book 10 and eventually Lyndsay Boxer makes it down the aisle. It was an auspicious start to Book 10, a glimmer that it might be as good as book 9'but sadly it wasn't to last. The thing about the series is that whilst sometimes Patterson gets it spot on and produces a rip roaring tale, sometimes they sputter and fail.

I have a theory as sharp as any Boxer could produce as to why. I know the novels are entitled Women's Murder Club but it's the club bit that let the poorer books down. In book 10 we seems to have returned to the format of Boxer investigating a central case with the SFPD, Yuki struggling to try a case in court and Cindy investigating something for the paper. This is becoming a little predictable and depends largely on the quality of each of the threads of the story.

In this instance Boxers case is not that exciting and is solved by 60-65% in, Yuki is now coming across as a so,we hat substandard lawyer who seems to always be struggling in court and Cindy's story is picked up and put down more times than a trashy mills & boon. All of the plots seem weak and don't make for as exciting a novel as Patterson usually provides.

It still pulls you through remarkable quickly and I read it in just over a day, zipping through the chapters, but it was still less satisfying to read than some of the other books in the series. Now we know what is going to be a focus in book 11 I'll still be keen to follow Boxer's next chapter but I pray it's not more of the same format. I miss the grizzly gritty cases of the early novels and a real sense of danger.