Featured books

Featured Websites

.: Reader Views Kids

Provides book reviews, by kids, for kids

.: Inside Scoop Live

Provides live author interviews for podcast

.: Authors Access

Provides interviews with experts in the publishing industry

.: Midwest Book Review

Provides post-publication reviews

.: Reader Views

Provides book reviews and author publicity

.: LR Communication Design

Provides professional website design and development

.: Blogging Authors

Provides a place where writers and readers meet

.: Review The Book

Provides 5 books reviews on 10 different sites

.: Best Sellers World

Provides book reviews and author features

.: Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Provides book reviews and author features

reviews

The 8th Confession (The Women's Murder Club)

James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Little, Brown and Company (2009)
ISBN 9780316018760
Reviewed by Narayan Radhakrishnan for RebeccasReads (3/09)

Vasuki did it…
Kali did it….

Okay, I am a spoilsport. I have revealed the names of the killers. That said, its not the names that count, but the process and method of killing that creates suspense in this 8th installment of the Women’s Murder Club series by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. Last year I had made a resolution not to read any further James Patterson works (the suspense was killing me), I could not keep the resolution, and I succumbed to temptation.

So, what is it that makes James Patterson novels an irresistible phenomenon? Why do his works leap onto bestseller lists as soon as they are published? Patterson himself has admitted that he doesn’t write many of the books, that the actual work is done by co-authors like Maxine Paetro, though the central idea of the plotline is of course by Patterson himself.   Yet people buy the books for the brand name, James Patterson. Seriously, someone ought to study this trend in popular reading culture, how an author becomes an institution. And this particular series, “The Women’s Murder Club,” is making waves not only in the print circle but also on TV.

Coming back to the book… Detective Lindsay Boxer, Pathologist Clair Washburn, Reporter Cindy Thomas and Attorney Yuki Castellano are back in action in “The 8th Confession.” The novel starts with a blast... both literarily and figuratively, with the bombing of a school van full of kids. In another part of the town someone is on a killing spree, and rich, famous and affluent couples are being found dead. How they are being killed? What’s the modus operandi?  It beats both Lindsay Boxer and Clair Washburn. Is it a case of sudden death syndrome… in adults? Their investigation reveals that something similar happened in the early Eighties.

Meanwhile, Cindy Thomas is on her own investigation. A street guru, a modern day apostle who goes by the name Bagman Jesus is also found brutally murdered. Being homeless, no one cares two hoots about his murder. Cindy thinks otherwise and is on a mission to find out the truth about Bagman Jesus, whom she feels was a messiah to the homeless. But her investigation reveals some unsavory truths about Bagman Jesus.

The novel is an absolute thriller.  A pure venom of a thriller.  Absolutely poisonous.

.: Blog
.: James Patterson's website