Book Review: The 9th Judgment

This book should have taken me three hours to read.

Instead, it took me three days.

Now, most of you know that this in and of itself is unusual. More unusual was the fact that I seriously considered not finishing it at all.

I've enjoyed the Women's Murder Club series for quite a while. It's been entertaining enough, and while I know that I've been behind, per usual, I finally got a copy of this and borrowed my grandmother's copy of 10th Anniversary and have been meaning to read them both for a while.

So what's the problem? This book commits the cardinal literary sin. It is boring as hell.

Let's start here: we know who the villains are in the first ten pages. We know exactly who they are, and within twenty-five pages, we know how the two cases are intricately connected in one of the most idiotic plots ever. Pete, a Iraq vet with some serious problems, is married to Heidi and has two kids. Pete is killing women and their babies because he can. Heidi is carrying on a lesbian relationship with Sarah, who is a teacher living a second life as a jewel thief and who is similarly married to an abusive husband. She breaks into a house and and the husband, Marcus, an actor, uses the opportunity to kill his wife (who is a friend of Heidi's, oddly enough).

Don't yell at me for spoilers. Almost all of this is outlined in the first twenty pages of the book. Only Pete's seeming 'reason' is held back, and it's contrived beyond belief, as is the ending, where Heidi goes into witness protection and is allowed to take Sarah with her (Sarah, who then mails all the jewels she's stolen back to Boxer, partly because she now has an out from her abusive marriage and partly because she doesn't want to take the rap for the murder of Marcus' wife).

Then there's the problems with the shift in perspective. We keep going from third person limited in Pete and Sarah's POVs, to Lindsey Boxer's first person point of view. It's enough to make your head spin.

It has more white space than type--chapters should last longer than two or three hundred words. A two or three hundred word chapter isn't artistic. It's lazy.

Things only pick up at the end of the book in the last two sections--after the case has wrapped up--when Boxer thinks Joe's been killed in a plane crash. Only he hasn't. So then they take some time off, and it turns out that she may have just inadvertently passed up her opportunity at promotion by being incommunicado. What happens next? You'll have to read 10th Anniversary to find out!

Uh, no. I won't. I'm sorry, but even though there is a little piece of me wanting to peek at the opening pages of 10th Anniversary to see what happened, I refuse. I simply refuse. The only reason I finished this book was pure stubbornness.

The odd thing is, I've liked James Patterson before. I remember liking the previous installments of the Women's Murder Club. I've only read the first two Alex Cross books--sorry, serial killers tend to prey on young women, which I still am, so I think I'll pass--but they also struck me as being well-written, despite the incongruity of James Patterson writing a black man. I don't know if the problem is Patterson or Maxine Paetro, the co-writer of the WMC books (and, who I suspect, is the main force behind them at this point, given Patterson's penchant for farming books out to co-writers, much the way that Clive Cussler has done). And perhaps it's me--it's been quite a while since I've read a WMC book, and it's possible that my taste has changed, but The 9th Judgment is not a good read.

Final Grade: D+

Lead me not into temptation....

....especially bookstores.

There's a reason I have shirt that says that. It's always dangerous to take me in a book store, because quite honestly, I want everything.

Today, however, I was in search of one book in particular--Timothy Zahn's newest Star Wars book, Choices of One, which I will not start until this evening at the earliest, because I have to get through my homework first and if I don't read my homework first...I'll end up Sparknoting it instead. Bad English graduate student!

But the problem with bookstores is that you then realize that there are more books that you want. For instance, Sherrilyn Kenyon is coming out with a new Dark-Hunter book on 2 August--Retribution--and apparently, another one comes out in paperback in November--The Guardian.
And then Joanna Lindsey has a new book out, When Passion Rules, set in the Regency era. Julie Garwood is coming out with The Ideal Man, Mary Balogh just released The Secret Mistress last week, Stephanie Laurens has two new books,Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue in August, and In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster, due in September (The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae comes out in January 2012), Nora Roberts has one set for November, The Next Always, and Catherine Coulter just put out a new FBI thriller today, Split Second.

Oh, but wasn't my last Catherine Coulter review abysmal? Yes, it was, and I found the next book, now in paperback while I was at Barnes and Noble and looked at the blurb in the cover. Here's the blurb listed on Amazon, attributed to Publisher's Weekly:

In Coulter's fab 14th FBI paranormal romantic thriller (after KnockOut), FBI special agents Dillon Savich and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, look into the possible haunting of a U.S. senator by his dead wife as well as a more earthly crime: Germany's Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical, which has its U.S. headquarters in Connecticut, might be deliberately withholding an inexpensive cancer fighting drug, Culovort, to force cancer patients to require the far more expensive Eloxium, in short supply. The FBI probe dovetails with one by PI and part-time ballet teacher Erin Pulaski, who's hired by a Yale professor worried about his cancer-stricken father being affected by the shortage. In a wild coincidence, Bowie Richards, the FBI special agent in charge of the New Haven field office, also hires Erin—to babysit his daughter, a ballet student of hers. The attraction between Bowie and Erin grows as they help Dillon and Lacey crack a complicated double case. Coulter fans will want to see more of this new crime-fighting duo.

WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THE PARANORMAL STUFF IN BOOKS THAT WEREN'T PARANORMAL?

So, Whiplash has been taken off the wish list. I don't want to read it anymore. And as for Split Second:

A serial killer is on the loose, and it's up to FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock to bring him down. They soon discover that the killer has blood ties to the infamous and now long-dead monster Ted Bundy. Savich and Sherlock are joined by agents Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight, and the chase is on.

At the same time, Agent Carlyle learns from her dying father that her grandfather didn't simply walk away from his family twenty-two years ago: he was, in fact, murdered by his wife, Lucy's grandmother. Determined to find the truth, Lucy moves into her grandmother's Chevy Chase mansion. What she finds, however, is a nightmare. Not only does she discover the truth of what happened all those years ago, but she faces a new mystery as well, a strange ring that holds powers beyond her ken.

As the hunt for the serial killer escalates, Savich realizes he's become the killer's focus, and perhaps the next victim. It's up to Lucy to stop this madness before it's too late.

That sound you hear is me banging my head against the wall.

Oh, and then I got home, and UPS brought Twilight's Dawn and Gabriel's Ghost. I finish The Reef tonight, and then start in on The Sun Also Rises for class. I'm editing a novella for a friend. I'm buried in books and books that I want to read.

Just the way I like it.

Book Roundup!

So, I scored majorly in the book department this weekend. My mother decided that a shelf full of hardcover romance novels could go, so off they went (most of them to my house, but some of them to Half Price because I either had them already or had no desire to read them again).

While I was at Half Price, I saw Quicksilver by Amanda Quick sitting on the new releases shelf. Mine! Ten dollars definitely well spent. I also managed to obtain John Wain's biography of Samuel Johnson, which I think will be helpful as I transition over the summer into my Restoration and 18th Century class, given how influential Johnson was during that era. (But Quicksilver! YAY!)

So, what did I manage to obtain from Mom? The list follows:

By Julie Garwood:
Slow Burn
Ransom
Murder List
Heartbreaker

By Jayne Ann Krentz:

All Night Long (signed!)
Light in Shadow
Smoke in Mirrors
Falling Awake
Sizzle and Burn
White Lies (Arcane Society)
Truth or Dare
Harmony (Jayne Castle)

By Amanda Quick (JAK's pseudonym)

Don't Look Back
The Paid Companion
Second Sight (Arcane Society)
The Third Circle (Arcane Society)
Late for the Wedding
The River Knows
Lie by Moonlight

By Elizabeth Lowell

Innocent as Sin
Always Time to Die
The Color of Death
Die in Plain Sight
Tell Me No Lies
Running Scared
Blue Smoke and Murder

By Mary Balough
Simply Unforgettable
Seducing an Angel (which I think was mine to begin with)

By Joanna Lindsey
A Loving Scoundrel

So, I've read most of these (if not all of them) already. But I'm looking forward to reading them again, and I may institute an "Oldies but Goodies" review tag for some of these. At the moment, however, I must run and begin Henry James' The Ambassadors for my American Expatriates class.

Though I think there's a cat waiting for me to give her scritches first.


ETA: I should note that I also borrowed James' Patterson's 10th Anniversary from my Gran, so I have to get through my copy of The 9th Confession. I also borrowed U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton from my dad (and I have to get through my copy of T is for Trespass too). Yes, I know I'm really behind.

KnockOut: In-depth Book Review

Coulter, Catherine. KnockOut. New York: Putnam, 2009. Hardcover. +417 pages. $26.95

What's this? Another post when I should be studying/grading/doing something probably more productive? This does not speak well of this book that my outrage is so bad I will put off French homework.

Well, maybe not. My French class is pretty bad.

And I should note, to be fair, I was kind of irritated when I started this book because I discovered that instead of managing to buy Whiplash (which apparently comes after KnockOut) on a steep markdown...I'd managed to buy, somehow, two copies of KnockOut. Granted, I did not pay $26.95 for either copy ($6.99, thank you B&N discount bin). Still, one will be going to Half Price Books. Possibly both.

So here is my open letter to Catherine Coulter.

Dear Ms. Coulter,

Please stop watching the X-Files.

Love,
your fans.

Seriously, I've enjoyed Catherine Coulter's FBI thrillers from the beginning. They're typically well-paced, exciting, and, referencing my previous post on Elizabeth Lowell's romantic suspense novel Death Echo, have had just the right amount of romance, given that Coulter started her career as a romance writer. And there has been weird stuff happen in Coulter's books before, but they were typically just things that had no real explanation--weird stuff that could probably be rationalized away, especially in Double Take.

But this has gotten a bit much. Now, one of the recurring characters, Dillon Savich, is flat out telepathic.

Excuse me while I GO BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL.

Anyway. The book opens with a bank robbery. Savich, of course, is in the bank and saves the day, killing one of the robbers. Unfortunately, her daughter is also one of the robbers, and the daughter's way over-age boyfriend is the driver, and the daughter eventually escapes from the hospital and is a recurring threat throughout the book as she really, really wants to kill Savich.

Savich, having gone home after a hard day's work, then receives a telepathic call from a scared little girl, Autumn, whose father's family is after her because of her psychic abilities, which they want to add to their cult.

Switch over to Sheriff Ethan. He's looking for a missing little girl. Turns out, she's been in his house all day, because she knows that he can protect her and her mother, Joanna, from the batshit insane family members who are after her.

So. Lots of running around, lots of trying to get all of the pertinent, unbelievable information from Joanna and Autumn, and finally, a call from Savich, which confirms their completely unbelievable story. Turns out, one of the crazies after her, Blessed, can take over people's minds, and when they finally get hold of him, he "stymies" everyone and gets back loose.

Lots of chasing around. Savich and Sherlock come to Virginia to help and to record the psychic phenomenon and let Savich's wonder computer, MAX, loose on stuff. The crazies take Joanna, Ethan and Autumn hostage, and Autumn does an acting job that deserves an Oscar for playing her crazy uncle to do what she wants.

In the mean time, Savich and Sherlock return to Washington to deal with the bank robber crazies, who they catch, of course, but partly because Autumn "calls" Savich and then psychically pummels the bank robbers for him. Back in the podunk cult town, Ethan and Autumn manage to throw down, which ends up with Autumn, who the cult leader calls the strongest psychic power he'd ever seen, shot.

At the end, Ethan and Joanna are together (which still boggles my mind. Even though Joanna's husband, Autumn's father, had been in prison for three years, he'd died two weeks before. That's a little fast, not to mention the fact that we barely see any kind of relationship developing), Autumn is alive, and they're wondering about whether or not she psychically burned herself out. After all, that kind of power's dangerous. Of course, the book ends on her psychically reaching out to Savich.

All of this could have easily been done in half the amount of pages by cutting out a tremendous amount of unnecessary scenes, and the bank robber plot really wasn't needed. Instead, the bank robbers seemed added in because the book couldn't pin the entire plot on just the psychic aspect. By the time I got to about the last third of the book, it was midnight and I was really wishing it was over already.

Here's my beef with KnockOut, and to be honest, with Death Echo as well. If I've read a series, I expect it to continue in the same vein. I don't need psychic intervention to make it fresh. I like the same kinds of adventures that we've seen before. And here's the other thing: when you go into a paranormal novel, you have a certain level of suspension of disbelief that you don't necessarily have when you're talking about an FBI thriller. To have that suddenly introduced to you, Pow!, shakes things up too much to ever really get your proper frame of mind back. I realize the need to keep things interesting and fresh for the reader, but you do that through your characters. You don't do this by adding an unbelievable plot device into a book where it doesn't belong.

KnockOut= D+

Right. I'm going to go be productive now.