He and I are thisclose to breaking up. I'm going to give the next Alex Cross book another try and if that isn't fantastic, Patterson and I are done.

For real.

This is the 8th installment in Patterson's Women's Murder Club series. There are two murder mysteries going on. The first is a series of crimes involving the wealthy; various people are found dead, but there's no apparent reason for it. The victims are all young and healthy and there's no definite cause of death. The other is a homeless man who was found shot and beaten to death. The first crime is the one that gets the most attention, partly due to the wealth factor and partly because nobody can figure out how the people died.

I've read James Patterson's mysteries for years now, and I've noticed that the quality seems to be going downhill lately. (I think it could probably be traced back to when he started relying on co-writers and releasing five books a year.) Like all of his books, this one is a fast read, but unlike other authors who have released multiple books in a year (for example, Stephen King), I can pretty much guarantee that in a few weeks, I won't be able to remember any details about this book.

Part of the problem may be that the dialogue doesn't seem that realistic. The police guess at first that something may be a "homicide/suicide." I'm not sure that they'd continue to use "homicide" instead of "murder" in that particular case. The dialogue just seems fairly wooden and not like what people would say.