The Beach Road [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

James Patterson is surely in danger of putting his name to a few too many novels. With the vast quantity published each year, supposedly 'co-written', one wonders if he is writing in his sleep to fit quite so many into the 24 hours each day provides. It's interesting that other websites state this book to be by Peter de Jonge and James Patterson, implying that the former may have had more to do with it than the latter.

Beach Road has Patterson's trademark short chapters that certainly have you racing through a lot of pages in a short time. It's an unusual structure, told in the present tense by several of the characters involved in it.

The central character, lawyer Tom Dunleavy, does the lion's share of the narration and is an interesting character with whom you always feel there is something not being told. Other characters, such as the ex-girlfriend he hooks up with in order to defend a young man accused of multiple killings, play their part, but it's Dunleavy who leads the way and he who holds the attention of the reader in the build up to the trial and ultimately in the trial itself.

Beach Road is a moderately good thriller that suffers from two major flaws. Firstly, the blurb builds it up too much and also leaves you looking for the twist. And secondly, perhaps as a direct result of that, it's a wee bit predictable. Far from being left in shock, as promised, I found myself a little cheated.

James Patterson is letting himself down by collaborating with too many authors and the quality of the subsequent work is decidedly mixed. Honeymoon was a very good thriller. Beach Road is interesting, but distinctly average. Let's hope Patterson rediscovers the spark that made him, at his best, one of the greatest living crime writers.

Sensational critique was written for this book, claiming that it contained the most unpredictable twist ever, which is true to some extent. It appears, however, that James Patterson sacrificed a riveting, gripping, thrilling tale in order to write the twist. There were few clues as to who the culprit would be, allowing for little imagination on behalf of the reader. The book was certainly not a page turner, like most of his books. Instead, I found myself struggling to continue with the book, almost bored by it.

I have been a Patterson fan for years, but lately his books have been awful, nothing but shadows of his older novels. This one is no different. Patterson was once such a creative and original writer, but it seems as if he's given up on his creativity to just throw together some stupid thriller that should not even be classified in that genre. If you want to read a good book, pick up Patterson's earlier works, like Three Blind Mouse or Kiss the Girls, if you want to read an up-and-comer who writes like Patterson once did, then check out David Demello's novels, Speak No Evil and The Killing Game