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Monday, July 27, 2009 10:21 PM CDT
BOOK REVIEW: 'Swimsuit'
By James Patterson
and Maxine Paetro
Review by Juanita Sherwood
‘Swimsuit’
By James Patterson
and Maxine Paetro
Review by Juanita Sherwood
This latest collaboration between Patterson and Paetro has jumped to near the top of the best-seller list, but their joint effort on the Women’s Murder Club series is much better than this offering.
The book is written in the typical Patterson style of many short chapters which make for a fast read. The premise here is intriguing, but the plot itself when carried to fruition, seems a bit lacking.
The main character is Ben Hawkins, an ex-cop, who now works as a reporter for the L.A. Times. The paper sends him to Hawaii to cover the disappearance of one of the models posing for the swimsuit edition of a magazine called Sporting Life.
The model’s name is Kim McDaniels, a beauty from the Midwest. Her parents are “good people” who have adopted and successfully parented two boys younger than Kim.
Kim is their natural child who came to be called the Miracle Girl for several reasons. She had had an episode with a bicycle and a neck scarf when she was barely a teen; this incident left her in the hospital in a coma for a while, but she fully recovered.
As a young adult, she had finished college and was about to begin medical school. She had also worked as a model and had dated a famous football player with whom she had recently broken up. He is one of the first suspected in her disappearance, but is later shown not to be involved.
Her parents are awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call that sets them into a panic. The caller is male and states that he has “taken” Kim. Her father hopes at first that this is a joke, but he and her mother make arrangements quickly to fly to Hawaii in a panic, to check on things for themselves.
They find that Kim is indeed missing when they arrive. Efforts are made by both the police and the parents to find her, but it is to no avail. The reader finds their situation sympathetic and the unanswered questions about their missing daughter heart wrenching. Eventually others in Hawaii are found to have been targeted by this maniac, including a young girl. What has been done to these victims is almost sickening, the work of a very twisted mind.
The villain is a master of disguise who insinuates himself cleverly into the lives of others and enjoys torturing and killing his selections. He is, indeed, one of Patterson and company’s more evil villains.
And, he is not the only villain in the story.
Hawkins eventually travels to Europe where he discovers that the killer is employed by a group of people from around the world, wealthy individuals at that. They have far-reaching powers financially and politically, and what the villain, Henri, does for them is disturbing to say the least.
He also discovers that Henri is a master at manipulating facts about himself both in what he tells others and in his own mind.
At one point it seems that it will be almost impossible for Hawkins to find and to overcome Henri.
Adding to the mix is Hawkins’s girlfriend, Amanda. She is a likeable character who appears in the story and is important to the second half of the book.
The Epilogue especially is a bit contrived and a little disappointing. Probably, there is no better way to end this situation with a satisfying ending, but it still seems lacking.
Read this one if you will, but prepare to feel a bit of disappointment, that the story needed a bit more “fleshing out.”
Sherwood of Charleston is a retired reading teacher.
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