The 6th Target

Listened to recording. The plot itself held my attention really well but the main character's love relationship drives me crazy!

When Fred Brinkley shoots at 6 people on a ferry, killing 4 of them and injuring others (including medical examiner, Claire, and her son), the question when he goes to trial is: was he legally insane? Also, little Madison and her nanny have been kidnapped, but there is no ransom note. There is a violent crime spree at the building that reporter Cindy lives in.

With three cases in this book, there is a lot going on. I enjoyed all three stories. Detective Lindsay is really starting to bug me a bit, though – can she not manage to be on her own (i.e. without a man in her life) for any length of time?

A mass shooting—a murderer loose in her best friend’s apartment building—children kidnapped, their nannies shot??? Now back to working the streets with her new partner, Rich Conklin, Sergent Lindsay Boxer has a lot to deal with. This sixth rendition of The Women’s Murder Club is action-packed and captivating. I love the way Patterson and Paetro create compelling characters and construct tight plots with lots of action, so the narrative never gets bogged down. The short, suspenseful chapters fly by just like a cool breeze.

A sudden shooting spree by a mad gunman leaves one of the women from the murder club gravely injured. Lindsay is determined to find the killer and bring justice to her injured friend. Finding him happens to be much easier than keeping him in prison and Yuki steps in promising to get justice.

Elsewhere in the city children from wealthy families are being abducted. No one calls for a ransom and they whole city is trembling with fear. Meanwhile, Cindy has her own case to handle when brutal violence breaks out in her apartment building.

Where are the kidnapped children and why are there no ransom calls? Are they dead or alive? Who is causing terror in Cindy’s apartment? Will Claire come out of this alive?

The story line in “The 6th show more Target” was a tad bit sloppy; on one angle was the mass shooting in a ferry, the other angle involved kidnapping of wealthy children and then there was yet another – misdeeds in an apartment building. Three diversified plots and not one of them managed to make an impression. In fact the only impact they managed to make was adding more complexity and confusion.

We get to see all the women from the club, though Claire becomes the victim in the shooting episode and lacks in action most of the time. I was worried that she would not live for the next book since I already miss Jill (she died in the 3rd book of this series) I dint want another strong and like-able woman gone. The romance between Lindsay and Joe lacks the spark because of the long distance ‘thingy’. Yuki and Cindy come and go as the cases need them but again neither of them managed to leave a mark. Of course Lindsay was the biggest disappointment.

This would be my lowest rated book in the series with only a 2 on 5. For once I could not finish a James Patterson book in a day or two – I held on to it for almost a week opting to move on to more interesting books as the plot and the characters refused to make an impression. I am still excited to read the next book (what can I say, a diehard fan !! ) show less

Three interwoven mysteries in this one, more interwoven by the investigator Lindsay Boxer and her friends and time rather than any common perpetrator. The story opens with a shooting spree on a San Francisco Ferry with one of the Women's Murder Club members caught up in it, the case isn't cut and dried, the gunman is not sane, but will justice be done? What is justice in this case, and I'm not sure it was accomplished.

The second case is a case of a child abduction with the nanny and the nanny turning up dead, as Lindsay searches she finds more questions than answers and she knows that time is running out.

Then there's the strange goings on in the apartment building where Cindy, the reporter of the pack, lives.

Interesting stories, kept me show more reading, didn't really stand out but there was a lot of tension in the stories. show less

I've made it through another Women's Murder Club book! Go me (because I'm not a fan of these books)! I don't understand how this is a "murder club" because after the second book they stopped getting together to solve the crime. There were three different cases going on here, which is just way too much happening. Pick something and go with it, don't give each person their own "case." I have one more of these books on my shelf, then I'm done with this series, I can't deal with 22 of these stories. And what is with Lindsay being attracted to EVERY guy she meets? I just don't like these books.

All in all, if you happen to be a Patterson fan, then by all means read these. If you aren't, I recommend Riley Sager, Ruth Ware, Tana French, Karin show more Slaughter, or Christina Dodd instead. They have much better writing and most of them are also female cops. show less

This is the sixth book in the "Woman's Murder Club" series (the Woman’s Murder Club is a quartet of friends – Lindsay Boxer the homicide detective, Claire the medical examiner, Cindy the intrepid reporter, and Yuki the assistant DA), but there's no reason you have to read the other books first (I didn't) as it can stand on its own. There's numerous plot lines going on in this book - a Law & Order type scenario in which a mentally unstable man goes a shooting spree and later is tried for it with Yuki representing the people (this courtroom drama is the least interesting part of the book, in my opinion); a kidnapping/murder case that Boxer and her co-workers tirelessly toil on with no leads; and a series of bizarre and violent show more happenings in Cindy's apartment building. I'm not really sure what's the point of having all these different story lines together in one book, unless it's just to make it harder to guess the ending or to add a little bit more so the book isn't just a formulaic mystery. The book ends with one of the mysteries left somewhat hanging, obviously to compel the reader to go on to the next in the series. This wasn’t enough to make me want to read the next book, just enough to leave me feeling dissatisfied with this book (although I must admit I wasn’t really thrilled by the endings for the other two mysteries either).

The narrative bounces around between these competing story lines often (combined with different narrators), making the flow somewhat disrupted but overall it keeps the reader on his or her toes wanting to read more to find out what happens next. Boxer is the nominal protagonist with parts of the story being told in her first-person point of view. However, numerous chapters are told in the third person from Yuki, Cindy, or the criminals’ perspective, not to mention a ton of short chapters from the point of view of an often random character (the nanny of the first child abducted, for instance). As I’ve undoubtedly mentioned in other reviews, I find it a cheap shot/poor writing to be forced to switch perspectives in order to tell your story.

Speaking of writing, this book is written by two authors, so the language and writing is slightly more sophisticated than other Patterson novels I’ve read in the past. Still, there’s nothing particularly stellar about the writing style. The characters are hardly fleshed out. The nominal protagonist, Lindsay Boxer, is pretty much your stereotypical cop in the genre – a hard-nosed detective who's really good at her job but doesn't have it together in her personal life. She's a woman, so add in her tearing up or flat-out crying every once in a while because she just doesn't know what to do with her life.

To sum up, I went into this book thinking it would be a James Patterson mystery novel like others I’ve read by him - a suspenseful page turner of little substance and not particularly skillful in terms of literary writing style - and I got exactly that. It’s a quick read despite its length, with short chapters that go pretty fast. I’d recommend it for fans of Patterson's other mysteries or of suspenseful thrillers in general, especially when your in the mood for lighter fare (in terms of literary style, not subject matter). show less