Rating: 
Summary: Very entertaining and fast moving
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was fast moving and each character was very well developed. It tooks lots of twists and turns in the end and keeps you guessing!
Rating: 
Summary: Real characters, fast paced tale and a startling conclusion
Review: Intriguing characters bring this James Patterson novel to life.
When newlyweds are being murdered, Lindsay Boxer, a homicide investigator in San Francisco, takes charge. While her personal life is in disarray she continues to hunt for whoever is behind these murders. She brings together three friends of hers, all professional working women with different areas of expertise, who carefully sift through all the clues to track down the cold blooded killer. Meanwhile, they also help each other out in their private lives to deal with a personal crisis that threatens to destroy one of them. Patterson does a remarkable job of creating a reality to these women that really holds the story together to it's startling conclusion.
Rating: 
Summary: it started good but ended really badly
Review: James Patterson's take on women detectives started out OK, with a nice structure, revealing the killer on the 1st chapter, so you feel you're reading a whydunit. Things are made more interesting by the appearance of a very likely suspect. However, logic and plausability were thrown out the window by the time the resolution came in. It's as if Patterson was thinking "what more incredulous coincidences can I come up with?". Also, do we really need that epilogue? Isn't better just to leave things hanging quite a bit so as the reader can have something to think about? But no, Patterson (or his editor) chose to dumb down an otherwise OK book with that unnecessary epilogue.
Rating:
Summary: Kept me guessing
Review: This was one of my favorite Patterson books! I thought I had it all figured out and oops...Patterson surprised me again. I loved the Women's Club. The characters themselves were wonderfully strong, intelligent women, who, because of their like careers had a bond from the beginning. Lindsay Boxer is a wonderful character dealing with a horrendous case and her own failing health. She manages to do both with the help of her women friends and her partner.
The book held me in it's clutches until the last page.
Rating:
Summary: Satisfiying and Creepy!!!!
Review: This is one of James Patterson's best novels the story line is quick and easy to read it has you going through every emotion each character encounters. The novel is especially different because instead of pattersons usual male narrator he chose a woman to be the main character which gives the novel a whole new light when it comes from the king of mystery, murder, thrillers. The novel was gory and twisted yet exciting and so suspensful it was hard to put down a really worth while read.
Rating: 
Summary: Derivative, predictable. Find any other thriller to read.
Review: This was my first James Patterson novel. It will, in all likelyhood, be my last.I expected a breezy, exciting thriller with a fun female detective protagonist. What I got was an utterly predictable, flacid story speckled with 'surprises' that I had spotted hundreds of pages before. Mr. Patterson seems more interested in trying to pull the rug out from under his readers than in trying to develop characters or tell a compelling story. The protagonist, a homocide detective for the San Francisco PD is supposed to be smart and hardworking. So are the other members of her "Women's Murder Club." There is a sort of "Sisters are Doing it for Themselves" bravura that Mr. Patterson tries to tap into that unfortunately comes across as if he'd been watching too many episodes of Moonlighting and Remington Steel, with a pinch of 9 to 5 thrown in. Very early eighties. The four women who make up the 'club'--which is a widly unethical mix of law enforcement, legal and press--are essentially indistinguishable, except for the African-American medical examiner, who occasionally sprinkles her dialogue with sentences ending in 'Honey.' Then there's the kinky writer who comes across like a two-dimensional character out of de Sade--I found myself wondering if Patterson was describing himself, which I at least had fun imagining. The plot is full of holes. My favorite turns on one of the major reversals--Patterson sells you on the idea that only one character could have misdirected the investigation in a particular way. He then spends eighty pages or so driving that point home, until the NEXT reversal, at which point the misdirection is totally forgotten--at least by Mr. Patterson. I found myself wondering what the heck was going on. Patterson shows no more depth of understanding his setting--the San Francisco Bay Area--than of his characters. It reads as if he'd picked up a somewhat out of date Fodor's guide to use for his research. He spends a lot of time dropping neighborhood names, but no time giving a sense of what makes those places different from each other--and San Francisco's neighborhoods abound in local color to work from. The nearly two hundred chapters average three pages in length--it made me jumpy just shifting from scene to scene. I wanted to yell out, "Cut back on the caffeine, dude! Or take some Ritalin!" During the course of this terrible book, ten people die grusome, aweful deaths, and I was hard pressed to care about a single one. At one point the protagonist lists a series of writers who create compelling, exctiting mysteries starring women--Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George and Patricia Cornwell. All three write novels books that I've read with great pleasure--suspenseful, surprising novels with interesting characters and a wonderful wealth of detail. This book was a paste imitation--go buy the real thing.
Rating:
Summary: Plot was all "1st to Die" had going for it
Review: When I bought this book, I didn't think it would be any good. My suspicions were actually quite accurate. I'm just happy I only spent eight dollars or so on it!!! I'll admit Patterson's plot for this book was pretty brilliant, but that was all it had going for it. His writing skills aren't too good. His character development was bad & the way he portrayed the newlyweds couldn't have been more cliched. It really made me want to gag. There has to be a way to write a thriller/mystery without the descriptions being cheesy. There are novels like this that have literary quality. In my opinion, any author who chucks out novels this quickly , it means the books won't be that great. But, hey, if you just want something to keep you guessing & don't mind that aside from the plot, the writing is pathetic, go for it.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good read
Review: I'm not very well read (though I'm trying to change that) and this is the first James Patterson novel I've read. I thought it was a good, not spectacular, effort. I must say that I got goose bumps on one or two occasions while reading the book...which I think is a good thing. Patterson isn't overly detailed in his writing, so the reading goes along quite smoothly and briskly. I love the fact that the chapters are short--it gives the illusion that the reader is reading at a brisk pace and it also allows for quick spurts of reading if you don't have huge chunks of time reserved for reading. For me, though, I didn't put the book down too often. I think readers--especially females--will find the concept of empowered females refreshing, though I'm only speculating since I'm not a female. :) The book takes some interesting twists all the way until the end. I can't say that I'm totally satisfied with the motive(s) behind the killings, but that doesn't really detract me from enjoying this book and recommending it.
Rating: 
Summary: Let down almost from the beginning
Review: This novel starts out promissing, but after the first killing we are introduced to the lead character, Inspector Lindsay Boxer. The initial momentum is never regained. Instead we follow Lindsay as she jumps to conclusions that any self respecting detective would call "possibilites" and not "definitives." We read how Lindsay is trying to figure out how the killer is discovering the vicitms--how does the killer know who's getting married. Never, as far as I recall, do we hear the possibility that the killer starts perhaps by reading an engagement announcement in the paper (not the eventual answer to how the victims are discovered, but wouldn't you think it might be possible answer to the question?). The club the women form to track down the killer is another disappointment. Lindsay unwittingly finds herself tied to run things by the women in the club before she can proceed to take action on case at times. All in all, it's a slow, predictable bore with a detective that does a poor job of an interigation. Her questions are phrased poorly and after almost every interview you're left wondering why she didn't pursue other topics you're thinking about, and would have asked the interviewee. I recommend you skip this one and try another one, or a different author.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling
Review: I found this book very groovy. Its nice to have a change of pace, a strong leading FEMALE character. The friendships between these ladies is warm and there input and perspectives, nice touch. The book is filled clues that made me want to go the back of the book ( I Didn't )What a great ending. I read it in one day, and couldn't wait to run out and buy 2nd Chance. James is such a GREAT writer, he may speed through at times but he keeps up the thrills.
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