Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross #8)
by James Patterson
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Book Summary Information
Author: James PattersonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09
ISBN: 0446613266
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780446613262
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross #8)
Book Review: "Has succss spoiled Rock Hunter, er ....James Patterson"?
Summary: 1 Stars
After reading "Four Blind Mice", I am now reluctantly ready to group Patterson in with John Grisham as being in the group of writers who have gotten "fat and lazy" after getting to the top of their field. This grouping is not hastily done becasue both authors have been good storytellers in the past...a few books ago.
I read the first half of the book in an evening and spent more time accidentally finding holes in the writer's logic and examples of "lazy" writing than I thought any writer--particularly a well known, published writer should have. I did not purposely go looking for problems ---they just cropped up. It was distracting. In one of the chapters, for example, the real killers kill a State Trooper in order to hide another one of their crimes. Afterwards Patterson NEVER mentions the State Trooper again. Certainly such a heinous crime would have been mentioned on TV or radio and all point bulletin issued for the trooper's killer(s). Another serious issue arises in my mind, at least, with regard to the period between sentencing of the victim and his execution by lethal injecction on death row. It is very short---a few weeks. Who ever heard of such? Usually, prisoners on death row are there for YEARS before they are executed---if ever.
Maybe its just me, but another minor example of the lazy writing was his repeated use of the word "slather"---at least three times in the fiirst half of the book. At one point, he describes "steaks were slathered with butter"; a few chapters latter, steaks (different ones) were slathered with mushrooms; in still another instance "the killers" slathered on insect repellant. Surely Patterson has a Thesaurus.
Probably the most egregious "problem" as far as I am concerned was the fact that Patterson wiffully changes his "Point of View" from omniscent to first person and back and forth without setting it up or addressing the change anywahere before it happens. At one moment the book is written as if God were the narrator--- i.e. He knows everything; the next moment Alex Cross is the narrator. Both God and Cross are good storytellers but Patterson should've made up his damn mind and used one or the other. Not to do so is very distracting and breaks his contract with the reader---at least it did with me. When I read it, it was if someone or something (maybe his publisher)was holding a gun to his head saying all the while "write faster, write faster" dammit.
Patterson has been a good storyteller in the past. He can do better. Right now, "me thinks" that Mr. PAtterson takes me as well as the rest of the book buying public for granted.
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