The Quickie, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

March 12, 2009 by
Filed under: book review, James Patterson, New York Times bestseller, Thriller 

I usually don’t like James Patterson so much, and therefore rarely reads him. In fact, the only book I have read by James Patterson that I really liked was The Jester. But that is a book that is about as non-Patterson as you can imagine. However, a couple of weeks ago, two Patterson-books landed on my desk more or less by accident, so I decided to give him another try.

And to my surprise I found The Quickie, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge that I blasted through The Quickie in two long sessions. I loved it. The format is typical Patterson I’d say – short chapters, an easy read, all of that. But the plot is different and the heroes very dark and shady indeed. The murderer is the husband of a female police officer in NYPD who thought she knew her husband.

Lauren Stillwell is a cop, and right after indulging in a “quickie” with a colleague as a revenge on her seemingly cheating husband, she witnesses her husband fighting with her lover and driving away with him. His dead body is found shortly thereafter. From there on, Lauren finds herself covering up the crime. And with each step she takes, she gets herself deeper into crime and corruption.

There are no heroes, no sympathetic characters in The Quickie. But there is an exciting, fast-paced plot, to some extent character-driven, that involves lust, deceit and murder. The Quickie has a noir aspect to it, along with the fast-moving, exciting action, that appealed to me. So this time, I will actually recommend a Patterson book. But let me also say that as all Patterson-books, it does require readers to suspend some disbelief and refrain pondering too seriously some of the fairly unlikely coincidences in the plot. Even so, The Quickie – to me – looks like one of Patterson’s best books.

Links to James Patterson’s books: Patterson at amazon US, Patterson at amazon UK, and James Patterson at amazon CAN.

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