Just Finished Reading: The Store by James Patterson & Richard DiLallo (FP: 2017) [322pp] 

With their latest writing project ‘The Roots of Rap’ rejected as being of limited consumer interest, Jacob and Megan Brandeis need a new idea to get them back in the game. With ‘The Store’ as a dominating influence on retail and watching its drone delivery flights buzz around their New York apartment doing an undercover exposé seemed like the obvious answer. With the online application accepted and a house assigned to them at a facility in Nebraska they were on their way to really dig the dirt on ‘The Store’. Their new home seemed, at least at first, just too good to be true – until they found the cameras and microphones logging their every move and every conversation. It soon became obvious that ‘The Store’ wanted to know EVERYTHING about their new employees and their teenage children. It filled their kitchen with their favourite foods, their wardrobe with new clothes in their exact sizes and responded immediately to any casual request. But what were they hiding? Why did neighbours appear and disappear overnight. Why did everyone in the town already know their names? Time to start digging before ‘The Store’ found out what they were REALLY doing. 

This was, by far, the worst book I’ve read this year or possibly in the last few years. The ‘plot’ such as it was felt like it had been stolen from a sulky teenager's laptop after s/he had already rejected it as being too poor to continue working on (never mind actually publishing). Being generous it was a thinly veiled attempt at an attack on (obviously) Amazon. However, with this travesty of a novel, I am not feeling generous at all. Frankly the veil did not exist and as the ‘plot’ thrashed about looking for a coherent narrative I found myself mesmerised by the experience of watching a fictional train wreck in slow motion. The characters research, once they got ‘inside’ the apparently secretive organisation, consisted of talking to neighbours, co-workers and lower management, doing a few Google searches and hacking into Congressional e-mail traffic. This skill (from Megan) was apparently acquired during a course on the subject that her husband had either forgotten about or which Megan never mentioned previously. Once the devilish plot had been uncovered (to amend the Constitution in favour of ‘The Store’) it was never referenced nor mentioned again. I could go on but I won’t. Overall, the characterisation was universally terrible without a single believable character – most especially the teenage pair who behaved like no teenagers I’d ever known. ‘The Store’ was portrayed as both omniscient and blind, omnipotent and hopelessly incompetent. The ending, which didn’t come soon enough, was embarrassingly bad – not quite in the ‘it was all a bad dream’ way but close enough. The pairs exposé is published to the horror of ‘The Store’ and the now enlightened public and all is put back as it should be with no drones flying and independent bookshops and libraries flourishing overnight. All is right with the world again – hurrah! What TOSH. What a sad, sad excuse for a book. This was in effect a childish rant against an organisation that must have offended the author at some point. If this is the best he can do in response I’m guessing that Amazon had a really good laugh at the author’s expense and sold a few more of his books whilst doing so. SO not recommended. AVOID.