Swimsuit [Kindle Edition]

'SWIMSUIT' is the latest stand-alone novel from James Patterson, this time teaming up with Maxine Paetro once again. It begins with an author named Ben Hawkins who is an ex-cop turned LA Times writer who has been sent to Hawaii to look into the kidnapping of a famous swimsuit model named Kim McDaniels. What Ben didn't expect though was that this is the work of a serial killer-for-hire who makes murder videos for some very exclusive clients and also happens to be a master of disguise.

Patterson's more recent stand-alones such as SAIL and YOU'VE BEEN WARNED as well as his latest Alex Cross and Women's Murder Club offerings have been nothing more than average reads, being very cliched and predictable, making me feel that Patterson was running out of steam, so when I sat down to start 'SWIMSUIT' I wasn't expecting this to be one of the best thrillers that I had read from the author in a long time so I was very surprised at how good this book was.

From the opening chapters when Ben is teasing the reader with small details about what is going to happen I was hooked. It was just so tense and fast-flowing throughout the whole book, I read this in absolutely no time. One thing I particularly liked about this one was how it changed from the Kim's point of view, then to her parents', then to the killers, then to Ben as the chapters went on, keeping the story very interesting and gave the different fears and emotions that each character was experiencing as the story went on. The characters were also all believeable and likeable. My only one small complaint was the very sudden ending which didn't explain a lot and felt very rushed in comparision to the rest of the book, making me feel like the writers had ran out of time.

Overall this is a highly recommended read that I thoroughly enjoyed and will definitely be lending my friends and family this book for their holidays. Keep up the good work JP!

This is a misleading book. With the title (Swimsuit) and an enticing holiday type cover, you might be mistakenly fooled into thinking this would be an enjoyable book suitable for the beach. It's not. It's sick and depraved. Did Patterson even read this, never mind write it? If this book was a film it probably would have been banned. it's gratuitiously violent and disturbing, going into explicit unneccessarily violent details at every opportunity. I will not finish it. I will not loan it to anybody nor indeed donate it to a charity shop. I wouldn't be responsible for subjecting another person to this horribly vile book.

The front cover describes the book as "James Patterson's most shocking and seductive story yet" and I'd say this is an accurate description based on the previous Patterson novels that I've read. Although there is quite a lot of sex in the novel I never thought that it was gratuitous or over descriptive. With regard to the violence, there were times when I actually turned away from the novel to divert my eyes in an attempt to block out some of the violence(I don't know why I do it, I always have, sometimes I actually cover my eyes and read through my fingers).

The concept of the novel is interesting (it reminds me a bit of Frankenstein in the way it is written) there is a Prologue and an Epilogue which are written in the voice of the main character Ben Hawkins who is telling us about the novel he has written, the actual novel in between is the novel that he refers to. I'm not going to give a plot summary as this is readily available from the product description and I'm very mindful that I'd get carried away and spoil the novel.

From Chapter 1 you are straight into the action and the pace doesn't slow down throughout the novel. You are drawn to the characters and feel a strong bond with Hawkins, his partner and the McDaniels. There is a point where the murders committed are described as being so awful that you couldn't make them up, when I read things like this it does make me wonder what sort of person actually thinks up the ideas for these as they are quite distrurbing.

Although on the whole this is a positive review, there were 2 things which I felt spoiled the novel for me (1) The ending was very abrupt, as there's lots of adverts for Pattersons other novels at the back of the book I thought there was quite a lot of story left but then suddenly you're left hanging, I like all the loose ends to be tied up and this didn't happen with this (2) This is quite a silly thing but it irritated me from the start; the writing is quite a large font and it's well spaced out so it makes it look as though the book is longer than it actually is, granted this will be because of the publishers rather than Mr Patterson but I thought it worth mentioning (it wasn't only me that noticed this but it was pointed out by my OH that my eye sight must be failing if I needed to read a book with such a large font).