The 9th Judgment (Women's Murder Club) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've read all of the Women's Murder Club novels - some were excellent (books 1-5 and book 7), some were awful (books 6 and 8) and I'm so glad I went with my gut on this one and bought it as I thoroughly enjoyed it, in fact I'd go as far as saying that this was my favourite of the whole series.
Like most of the others in the series, there's two main cases going on - the first is a psychopath known as "The Lipstick Killer" who is terrorising San Francisco by murdering mothers and their babies on the street and at random. The next is a cat burglar called "Hello Kitty" who is being framed for murder when a well known movie star shoots his wife following a robbery at their home. Lindsey and the gang have their hands full in this one, so there isn't a slow moment. Some of the scenes were so exciting I was flying through the pages as I just couldn't stop reading - a quick hour's read turned into a whole evening's binge and I had the book finished in 4 hours! Some bits of the story were a little predictable, maybe because I read a lot of James Patterson novels so I am very familiar with his formulas now, but that didn't stop it from being one of the best I've read from him for a while.
One thing I noticed in this book was that the main attention has been turned to Lindsay again, which is great as some of the other characters - Cindy and Yuki in particular - make the stories in the previous novels quite dull and I find these characters to be too arrogant and generally annoying, so didn't enjoy the ones when they were in the spotlight so much.
Although it is the ninth in the series, this could still be picked up by someone new to the Women's Murder Club novels and easily get into the characters and the gripping story. Fans of the series, like myself, should find this very satisfying and will have their faith in the series restored after the below average attempts over the past few years (excluding 7th Heaven (The Women's Murder Club)). I definitely recommend reading this book!

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The most personalA young mother and her infant child are ruthlessly gunned down while returning to their car in the garage of a shopping mall. There are no witnesses, and Detective Lindsay Boxer is left with only one shred of evidence: a cryptic message scrawled across the windshield in bloodred lipstick. The most dangerousThe same night, the wife of A-list actor Marcus Dowling is woken by a cat burglar who is about to steal millions of dollars' worth of precious jewels. In just seconds there is a nearly empty safe, a lifeless body, and another mystery that throws San Francisco into hysteria. The most exciting Women's Murder Club novel everLindsay spends every waking hour working with her partner, Rich--and her desire for him threatens to tear apart both her engagement and the Women's Murder Club. Before Lindsay and her friends can piece together either case, one of the killers forces Lindsay to put her own life on the line--but is it enough to save the city? With unparalleled danger and explosive action, The 9th Judgment is James Patterson at his compelling, unstoppable best!

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Degrees of Freedom (Samuil Petrovitch) Review

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(More customer reviews)It has been about a year since the Americans destroyed Oshicora Tower and buried the Artificial Intelligence known as Michael beneath a pile of rubble, an event that occurred in Theories of Flight, the middle novel of the Petrovich Trilogy. World governments revile Petrovich, regarding him as a terrorist because of his conduct in that novel and the first, Equations of Life, while the residents of the Freezone regard him as their de facto leader, if not their savior. Now the Freezone's actual leader, Sonja Oshicora, is at odds with Petrovich, who has discovered what appears to be a nuclear bomb in the Freezone, apparently an undetonated device installed by the Armageddonists decades earlier. (At last, the trilogy's readers are given a meaningful glimpse of Armageddon's cause.) Petrovich soon discovers that neither the bomb nor Sonja's actions are what they appear to be, leaving Petrovich once more to take on the task of saving the Freezone's residents from internal and external forces that threaten its destruction. Fortunately for Petrovich, he's not acting quite so single-handedly this time, having assembled a loyal cadre of friends during the course of the first two novels, not to mention his wife, a deadly ex-nun.
In addition to the interesting question of how one builds a functioning, beneficial government that actually serves its people in the aftermath of Armageddon (a creative and intriguing problem I haven't often seen science fiction address), Simon Morden takes on a more familiar theme, one that science fiction writers have tackled since at least the days of Asimov: what is the difference between a human and an artificially intelligent machine? Petrovich decides that Michael will have to convince the Catholic Church that a machine can have a soul. I thought it would have been fascinating to see that conversation play out; unfortunately, it all happens offstage. That disappointing omission makes the story seem incomplete, but that's one of my few complaints about this surprisingly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.
Morden delivers a nice blend of drama, action, and comedy in this novel. Where the second novel seemed to feature violence for the sake of violence, the action scenes in this one are more purposeful. The comedy that was overdone in the first novel and perhaps lacking in the second is more carefully balanced in this one: funny little bits pop up here and there, my favorite being a character (Tabletop) who amuses herself by molding Petrovich's plastic explosives into animal figures. I was also fond of the character Valentina, a Russian whose zeal for revolution leaves her itching to foment an uprising against the Freezone's oppressors (she makes sure her followers are supplied with red flags, because it's the "traditional color of such occasions" and "doesn't show blood").
It's not that often I come to admire a fictional character, but Petrovich is a truly admirable creation: a self-sacrificing hero, an idealist who refuses to be seduced by power and fame. Petrovich is the kind of unwilling leader we wish for in the real world: someone with the wisdom to exercise power nobly for the betterment of society before standing aside to let everyone else do their part. He's a character of sufficient complexity to experience guilt about the consequences of his actions without feeling remorse for doing the right thing. He gives a speech toward the novel's end about how he's changed because of the events described in the trilogy, how he's learned to be unselfish, to value his friends and to be a reliable friend to them, but it's clear that Petrovich had integrity from the start, and it's his integrity, his consistent refusal to take the easy path when he doesn't feel it's morally correct, that makes him so interesting.
Perhaps us Yanks should be disturbed that Petrovich characterizes Americans (or maybe just the members of the administration that rose to power after Armageddon) as "a bunch of nuclear-armed fundamentalist xenophobic psychopaths" but there are, after all, some American politicians who fit that description (and some Brits as well). I don't mind that Morden made the United States the baddest power on the planet, but Morden's version of an American president made whacky by religious zeal is a stereotype we've seen many times. That's a minor quibble, though, and I actually liked the scenes in which Petrovich gets payback against the United States in a relatively nonviolent way.
Ultimately, I think this is the best novel of the trilogy. I doubt it will make such sense to readers who haven't read the first two, and so (despite my criticisms of the second novel, a book that in restrospect seems like filler designed to bridge the first and third) I recommend reading them all. It's great fun and not quite like anything I've read. If Morden wants to give us more Petrovich stories, I'll read them. (Minor point: If Morden does publish another Petrovich novel with Orbit, he needs to convince Orbit to lay out some cash for real cover art. The geometric designs Orbit came up with give me a headache.)

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The Six Degrees of PetrovitchMichael is an AI of incalculable complexity trapped under the remains of Oshicora tower. Petrovitch will free him one day, he just has to trust Michael will still be sane by the time he does.Maddy and Petrovitch have trust issues. She's left him, but Petrovitch is pretty sure she still loves him.Sonja Oshicora loves Petrovitch too. But she's playing a complicated game and it's not clear that she means to save him from what's coming.The CIA wants to save the world. Well, just America, but they'll call it what they like.The New Machine Jihad is calling. But Petrovitch killed it. Didn't he?And the Armageddonists tried to kill pretty much everyone by blowing the world up. Now, they want to do it again.Once again, all roads lead back to Petrovitch. Everyone wants something from him, but all he wants is to be free...

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