Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Four crime-solving friends face off against a killer in San Francisco. Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant DA, and Cindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle.
But the usual procedures aren't bringing them any closer to stopping the killings. So these women form a Women's Murder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case by sidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whose crimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they track down the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have ever encountered--before a shocking conclusion in which everything they knew turns out to be devastatingly wrong.
I really enjoyed James Patterson's early Alex Cross novels when I first started high school. The likes of KISS THE GIRLS, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, and others were - along with Patricia Cornwell's first few Kay Scarpetta novels - the first darker, more forensic and psychological crime novels I read. I devoured all of Pattersons's early books that my high school library had (the first 6-8, from memory).
As I aged and was exposed to the likes of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, James Lee Burke, and many others, I realised how much richer and deeper characters and settings could be, while still delivering a page-turning tale that had me whirring the pages to find out what happened. Patterson slipped from a top favourite to an occasional read, exacerbated by him starting his run of co-writes. But when I was at a beach house on a rainy first week of the year one holiday season I spied this novel - the first in his 'Women's Murder Club' series - and decided to dip in. It had been a while. How would I enjoyed a non-Alex Cross novel from the top-selling author?
Overall, while I raced through the book quickly (Patterson certainly knows how to set hooks and drag you through the pages), I was left with the same empty-calories feeling of his later Alex Cross books and the early co-writes (some of the later co-writes with the likes of Candice Fox and Liza Marklund are a notch above). 1ST TO DIE introduces a quartet of women who band together to solve crimes. There's a lot to like about the set-up, but as has become typical in Patterson's delivery, this is more about a quick-moving serial killer plotline, with only minor dashes of characterisation or setting.
Enjoyable-ish for what it was - in fact it was literally a 'beach read' for me, or a near-the-beach-in-the-rain read - but like fast food, quickly devoured and forgotten. Having said that, I'd still try more from the series at some point, in among more substantial dishes from other crime writers.
This is an expanded version of a mini online review I wrote of this book after reading it in early 2012.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. In recent years he’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at books festivals on three continents. He has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and the McIlvanney Prize, and is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. You can heckle him on Twitter.
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