What A Stinker!
The Beach House by James Patterson
I hated The Beach House.I'm terribly tempted to just end my review right here, rather than make you go through endless words that will come to the simple conclusion that I hated The Beach House. Misery loves company though -- James Patterson and Peter De Jonge made me go through 358 pages of The Beach House to get nowhere but annoyed, you can suffer through another 800 words or so from me.
What's To Hate?
Let's start with the plot, shall we?The prologue is written first person by our soon to be departed Peter Mullen, narrating the moments up to his death. The illogic in having the Dead Guy "write" his final thoughts is annoying:
That's when I know I'm going to die. And for what it's worth, I even know who my killer is.
Bam, Peter's dead. Obviously, he couldn't have written that for us to read, and obviously (in hindsight) the writers were preparing me for an entire book that doesn't really care about the logic behind any set up. If I had listened to my little voice, I would have stopped reading right there. Instead, I plunged on.
We shift to the first person of Peter's brother, Jack Mullen, and see most of the rest of the book through his eyes. Jack's a summer associate at Nelson, Goodwin and Mickel, and a promising student at Columbia Law. He learns of his brother's death and goes home to small town Montauk, to get to the bottom of Peter's murder.
Jack has to fight Power, Money and Corruption on the way to Truth. Along the way he discovers that Sex and Lies are at the bottom of Peter's death. Will he be able to expose The Truth and Make the Bad Guys Pay before they Knock Him Off?
Pull out a plot cliche', it's contained in The Beach House.
In and of themselves, plot cliches don't make me hate a book. Formulas are often comforting and a cliche' ridden book can be fun, if the ending is satisfying. The ending to this book, hmmm, how do I sum it up? I've got it:
The only way the ending to this book could have been more absurd is if the writers decided to have extra terrestrials beam to earth in the final third to right all wrongs.
Or:
This ending stinks like the dead fish that wash up on the shore by The Beach House.
I have a long-standing tradition of throwing a book whose ending I hate clear across the room when I finish. I threw this one so hard I broke the spine. Can't even sell the dang thing on eBay now.
Legal Thriller?
Quote from the dust jacket that sucked me into coughing up my hardcover cash:The Beach House is a breath taking legal thriller of deceit and revenge -- with a finale so shocking it could have only come from the mind of James Patterson.
Puhleeze. Would somebody please tell these blurb writers that a book is not a legal thriller just because the characters are lawyers? A legal thriller turns on logic and evidence and points of law. Think Presumed Innocent. Think The Client. For television, think Law and Order. The dreck that is The Beach House has nothing to do with points of law as its finale...it has a cast of characters committing a simply outrageous stunt that couldn't pass a kindergartner's logic litmus test.
James Patterson, I hardly knew ye
The Beach House bears James Patterson's name on the top of the front cover, but it doesn't take Alex Cross to figure out that the co-author, Peter De Jonge did all of the heavy lifting in writing the book. I've read a good chunk of everything Patterson has ever written and this book has few similarities, except the Best Seller Marquee name of James Patterson. I'd bet $100 in Amazon gift certificates that Patterson did nothing more than read the finished manuscript, add his name and collect his check...not unlike the franchising Mr. Clancy seems to be up to of late. If the lack of Patterson's attention had resulted in a book that was worth the Best Seller Marquee hard cover cash I coughed up, there would be little to complain about. Complain? I'd be happy to go on kvetching for another 5000 words if I were as merciless as the aforementioned writers in spending other people's time.Don't waste your money and don't waste your time on this book. The Beach House isn't even worth the minutes it would take to check it out of library, let alone to consume it. If you are Jonesing for a legal thriller, go re-read Presumed Innocent.
