| Audiobook Review -
The 5th Horseman by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro - reviewed by
Robert W. Karp |
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Riding in as the fifth installment of the Women’s Murder Club series, The
5th Horseman attempts a hat-trick: 3 genre stories in one novel. This attempt
has varying levels of success.
The Women’s Murder Club is a group of San Francisco women, all in great jobs: a
star reporter, medical examiner, as well as main character Lindsay Boxer, a
police lieutenant on the SF police force. A new face, attorney Yuki Castellano,
had joined the group. In this story you really don’t get the feeling that the
women operate as a group to solve murders, which seemed more evident earlier on
in the series. Yuki turns out to have a major role in the story and she seems to
have the most personality of the group as well. I enjoyed the interaction
between Yuki and her mother which included some good natured rifts on ethnic
stereotypes.
A prolog to the book sets the stage in San Francisco Municipal Hospital for a
medical serial killer type of story with the death of a patient. The book quickly shifts to
a grisly murder of an unidentified young woman.
The clothes that the victim was wearing are crucial clues. Are the two cases
related?
As Lindsay’s rather straight forward police investigation (the type you might
see on a good episode of Law & Order) continues a third plot unfolds, a
high-profile medical malpractice case involving what may have been accidental
deaths at the very same hospital. Now we have three plots going that may be
intertwined: Medical serial killer suspense, courtroom trial, and police
procedural.
I’m not one to give away plot details. Let’s just say one of the three plots
ends suddenly in the middle of the book. There was no “cheating” the outcome
seemed correct to me; they followed the clues and did good police work. But at
the time, I was thinking, “so what?”
The other two plots did intersect; at least I think they did. It was a bit murky
in the end. Each had a good twist that surprised me. You have to wait to the
very end of the book, to get a big pay off. I saw some holes in the plot, but
that’s ok.
I wasn’t quite as involved as I have been in some of the earlier books in this
series. A couple of notes: 130 chapters, some of which were less than a minute
long on audio, seem a bit over doing the chapter thing. Also, you don’t always
have to tie in the title to the actual text, it does happen very late in the
book in a way that made absolutely no sense to me.
Production values on the book were excellent with a great reading performance by
a personal favorite of mine, Carolyn McCormick who has long been on Law & Order
as Doctor Olivett. You have to get used to the first person narration that jumps
from Lindsay to other characters.
For those of you who are not familiar with James Patterson and this series, I
give this two ears. For Patterson fans this is a three ears. So that averages
out to two and half ears, but we don’t have a half ear for our website.
About Robert W. Karp - Robert Karp is the owner of AudioMysteries.com. He is an avid
reader of mystery and detective fiction and collects signed first editions of
Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and other great mystery authors.
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