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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Just Finished Reading: When the Wind Blows by James Patterson

James Patterson is best known for his Alex Cross detective novels (Cross excellently played by the superb Morgan Freeman in ‘Kiss the Girls’). But here he tries his hand at Science Fiction – and does a pretty good job for an amateur [grin].

The story starts with FBI burn-out case Kit Harrison apparently on vacation. Kit is, however, investigating a case against the direct orders of his superiors, a case involving the murder of geneticists and rumours of secret labs illegally experimenting on human subjects.

Rather swiftly we are thrown into a world where conspiracy is mixed in with conspiracy, where friends become enemies and where children are commodities sold to the highest bidder, a world where knowledge is a death sentence.

This is certainly not a great work of literature but is more than entertaining enough. The characterisation is good (though I squirmed somewhat at the ‘romance’ bits) and Patterson presented some interesting ideas. This is a very visual book where locations, people and action are easily rendered in the mind. You could almost smell the smoke and felt the need to dodge the bullets.

The character of Max is particularly well done. Patterson obviously has children to draw them so well and I defy anyone not to like and envy her. When I read a book I want to care about the characters involved. After all if you don’t care about the people why bother paying good money to read about them? I cared about the people in this book and will enjoy reading the next in the series – which is excellent as I’ve already bought it! A good holiday read.

2 comments:

Sadie Lou said...

I love James Patterson. I just picked up Lifegaurd which he co-wrote with Andrew Gross.

CyberKitten said...

I like him a lot too. Very good author.