Lifeguard is a fast-paced, 'whodunit' sorta thriller novel written by James Patterson telling the story of lifeguard Ned Kelly from the first-person view.
Ned Kelly is a lifeguard on Palm Beach, nothing ever goes right for Ned and is beginning to believe his luck will never change...that was until he met Tess. He falls in love with her almost instantaneously and somewhat necessarily and seems to think that after having sex with her one time that all of his luck is going to change. After agreeing to assist his childhood friends in an art robbery his bad luck excels rapibly, resulting in the death of all of his friends and Tess herself. Now a suspect of several murders he flees only to lead into more trouble...

Stephen King, one of my favourite authors, criticised Patterson stating his biliography consists of 'dopey thrillers', I value King's opinion very highly and have great respect and admiration for him but I felt strongly weary of this quote as I thoroughly enjoyed the film adaptation of James Patterson's 'Along Came a Spider'. However after reading Lifeguard I immediately see how Stephen King thought this as Patterson's writing was verrrrry sloppy indeed, he lacked greatly in description and far too many murder than was necessary occured. I feel as though my own writing skills and literal interlect has decreased greatly after reading Lifeguard (I think I spelt a lot wrong in this review).

I also have three other Pattersons I plan to read: Cross; Mary, Mary and The 5th Horseman. If I hadn't seen the film adaptation of Along Came a Spider and had read the excerpt from Honeymoon at the back of Lifeguard I wouldn't bother reading them. The Honeymoon extract shows a large improvement in James Patterson's writing, so I don't quite hate Patterson yet, I'm just disliking what I've read so far... ( )

Lifeguard was an interesting fast paced thriller. It's not very believable, however it is fast paced with a decent story going on behind it. Ned Kelly is a lifeguard in Palm Beach, though he has been many different things prior to that. Minor felon, High School Teacher and College Hockey Star are all hats Ned has worn at one time or another. After Ned went to college he left his life of crime behind him, or did he? His best friends are handed a cushy B&E job to steal some paintings for a collector from a private residence, and they are even given the security code. Ned's job isn't even on site, he gets to run around town and set off Burglary alarms to help keep the small police force busy and away from the mark's house. Ned does his part perfectly, but something goes terribly wrong on the other end, many people get killed and things just keep going downhill from there for poor Ned.

Overall it's got a good pace to keep your attention, I listened to this in the car during my commute and it helped the time slip by. If you're a James Patterson fan it's about average for him not poor or exceptional. ( )

ned kelly & tess gets killed. Teams up with FBi woman agent to solve missing paintings and whokilled his friends. I'm not much of a mystery person so I got a little nuts with this. ( )

I quite liked this one, and everytime I thought I knew who it was, typical Patterson kept me guessing. One memo to Patterson, they don't need to fall in love in every book :) ( )

I got started with James Patterson with Kiss the Girls, which was a decent book. There was a second one I read that I was less impressed with.

This one is one of the worst books I've ever read. Actually, I did this one on audiobook--and the sound effects and music did not improve the story, but just showed how cheesy it actually was.

No more James Patterson for me. Ever. ( )