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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Third Degree: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Greg Iles latest novel, THIRD DEGREE, is a harrowing thriller that takes place over the course of an afternoon. Lauren Shields teaches a developmentally disabled class at the elementary school. Her husband Warren is a doctor. One morning she wakes up and finds Warren frantically searching the house for something. In fact, he's been searching all night. He says it has something to do with an IRS audit of his business. Lauren has problems of her own. She's pregnant, and the baby probably isn't Warren's. For the past several months, She's been having an affair with Danny McDavvitt, a war hero and a kind man who has marriage problems of his own. Danny wants to leave his wife for Lauren, but can't for fear that his wife will get custody of his autistic son. Warren's office is also under investigation for Medicare fraud, and Warren's partner, Kyle Auster is devious and amoral.
You throw the above beginnings of a plot into a a 12 hour period, and you get this novel. I glanced at a few reviews, and many negative reviewers seemed to dislike the story as not a traditional Iles novel. Iles is a great novelist and one of the few out there that constantly change genres. He started out with World War II novels, then moved onto standard thrillers. He wasn't afraid to try new things, like Footprints of God (a sci-fi look at the nature of religion) or Dead Sleep (a novel all Steven King fans would love). Iles has tried this before. His 24 Hours spanned a day. He's trying it again in this character driven thriller. If the entire novel is compressed into a day, then what keeps the pages turning? Iles introduces a desperate man in Warren and a confused wife in Lauren, thows in a couple of kids and then keeps adding characters who have parts to play in the drama. We miss out on character development, although Iles does add just enough backstory to let us know what is going on.
I liked this book because I like Iles, and I trust that he knows what he is doing even as he tries to tell a different type of story. The book has some weaknesses as well. Telling a story over a 12 hour period means you lose a lot of characterization. The decision to cheat on your spouse and potentially destroy a marriage is not one entered into lightly, yet the relationship between Lauren and Warren gets neglected in the format of the novel. Why did she cheat? Why did she feel the need to cheat. What did she ever see in Warren in the first place.
Don't worry, by the end of the novel, Iles has resolved most plot threads and even offered and explanation for Warren's sudden erratic behavior. He also tries to explore some themes such as marriage, family and forgiveness, but never really offers any answers. By reading the reviews, it is obvious some fans were disappointed in Iles' latest effort. Not me. I found it quick and easy to read, and highly suspensful. The only negative is that there weren't really any sympathetic characters to root for. They weren't all truly evil, but when your heroine is an adulterer who refuses to tell her husband who she is sleeping with, there isn't much room for sympathy. Overall, I recommend to all Iles and thriller fans. Just know you are getting something different, and be thankful that Iles is one of the best authors around and very capable of pulling it off.


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The 34th Degree: A Thriller Review

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(More customer reviews)During the Second World War, Hitler and his cronies searched for an ancient secret text because it contained the formula for creating Greek Fire. The original formula came from Atlantis but was secretly encoded in one of Saint Paul's testaments to the Thessalonians back in New Testament times.
With Greek Fire the Nazis could have won the war. Its unique thermodynamic formula would have allowed Hitler's regime to light afire any/all water that touched allied harbors. All ships, men, and harbor cities they could have turned into a holocaustic conflagration. But this text was kept hidden by monks deep within a secret monastery high atop one of the mysterious Meteora mountains in Greece.
Now Pentagon officials want Sam Deker to locate this text to keep it from falling into terrorist hands because if misused, it could possibly bring about an apocalyptic event ending human life on our planet. Because of the mental torture he survived while serving in the Israeli Army, Sam Deker, who now lives in the United States, is chosen by the Pentagon to help find this lost biblical document because of what he had endured
According to The 34th Degree, in order to find the formulaic text, Deker must travel back in time to infiltrate the Nazi regime where he will use the same clues they used when seeking the text. This is a story about backward time travel. Author Thomas Greanias has devised a clever method of studying the German mind during the last two years of World War Two.
Found preserved for posterity is the brain of Hitler's top henchman, SS General Ludwig von Berg. By systematically cutting through his brain tissue with almost microscopically thin slices, information contained on those slices will be fed into Sam Deker's brain and reassembled. He will be able to analyze that past data and rethink in mente the ideas of the dead Nazis who had allegedly located the doctrine, but not in time to perfect it and use its power.
For readers who like thrillers, this could be the book for you. But you will have to place aside any sense of reality considering all the bizarre elements assembled to make this story work. The tale includes: Atlantis, ancient Jericho, an encoded letter of Saint Paul, an atomic bomb, the Nazis, Masonic symbols, Greek Fire, brain information transference, secret texts, secret monastery, doomed submarines, text predicting the demise of the world.
Needless to say, I did not find the book exciting because its characters are far too unreal. The first few pages are crammed with too much information needed to explain the predicament the Pentagon is in. It seemed to rush through an explanation of what Deker was up against just so it could get to the real story in 1943-45.
Within a very few lines, Sam Deker accepted his fate and readily climbed into the electronic apparatus that would insert probes deep into his brain so that information transfer could begin. Any concern for life or death at the hands of this experiment Deker merely brushed off.
All in all, as much as I like thriller stories, The 34th Degree was 34 degrees too far into the realm of the outlandish. Although I think it a major feat to include so much in a fictional undertaking, perhaps there is a point beyond which any sense of belief fades away in favor of the preposterous.
Other Interesting Reading:
Shadow Flight
Healing Charles


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An ancient text. A world at war. The end of history. Prepare to be initiated into The 34th Degree.From New York Times bestselling author Thomas Greanias comes an all-new, reality-altering epic adventure featuring counter-terrorism agent Sam Deker from The Atlantis Revelation and The Promised War. 1943. The supernatural alchemy for the ultimate weapon, encoded in an ancient biblical text, has fallen into the hands of the most ruthless secret society known to man—the Nazi SS. Present Day. Dishonorably discharged from the armed forces after the events of The Promised War, Sam Deker is trying to build a new life in Los Angeles. But nightmares of the past continue to haunt his present, and Deker discovers that the unusual lightwave-induced torture he barely survived has changed him. The Pentagon, however, believes that change makes him the only one who can endure their top-secret neuro-simulation program known as the 34th Degree. The stunning technological breakthrough uses the sliced brain tissues of dead terrorists to enter their memories and glean priceless intel. Now Americans want to use the preserved brain tissue of SS General Ludwig von Berg, the legendary "Baron of the Black Order," to send Deker back to 1943. Deker's mission is to discover the fate of the lost biblical text and steal its formulas before his counterparts in the Alignment, a 21st-century successor to the SS, beat the U.S. to it. The text not only spells out the end of the world, but the supernatural alchemy for Greek Fire, a thermodynamic technology that the ancient Greeks believed to have come from Atlantis and that the Americans now believe threatens the Earth. Ultimately, Deker discovers that the past, present and future are not what they seem, as his path leads to a shattering secret that will change everything he knows about the universe.

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