Paranoia: A Michael Bennett Thriller, James Patterson, James O. Born, authors, Peter Giles, Will Collyer, Kiff VandenHeuvel, narrators
All of a sudden, there seems to be an epidemic of retired cop suicides. At the same time, there seems to also be a surge in the murders of drug dealers. Are the two issues connected? Is there a serial killer or a hired professional assassin on the loose? Coincidentally, all of these deaths seem to be connected to cases that were investigated by a group nicknamed “the sharks”, and they all also involved a major drug dealer.
Celeste Cantor is retiring from the police force and is running for the City Council. Because she is worried that these killings might somehow be connected to her past police activity and hurt her chances to win the election, she asks her friend and fellow police officer, Michael Bennett, to partner with Rob Trilling, and look into these killings. She tells him to keep it below the radar and only report to her. She doesn’t want any undue negative publicity to touch her campaign.
The more interesting police investigation narratives were too often interrupted by the personal family matters of the Bennett family and others. The Bennetts are a model, well-adjusted family, but their romantic interests, health and other issues, along with the details of the personal and romantic lives of several other characters, added extraneous issues that never seemed resolved or necessary and were often distracting.
At the end, there seemed to be threads that were never tied up. Many of the murders were never solved. Why would Celeste ask Bennett to investigate crimes that she might be involved with, an investigation which would possibly cause problems for her? Why would an assassin have a sudden pang of conscience without a real compelling reason after being so cold-hearted? How was the drug dealer case really connected to this mystery? Why did it seem that so many good people had to be sacrificed so that the criminals could survive? I found the novel disappointing with what seemed like contrived finger pointing at corrupt cops and dishonest TV personalities that preyed on children or beautiful women.
There were “woke” ideas introduced like racial relationships and toxic males who were nothing more than thugs. There were unexplained connections of some characters to military service and Israel’s Mossad with negative insinuations. I did not think that these ideas were ever well explained or explored.
If you can get through the trivial scenes and some of the confusion, you will discover the story itself occasionally gets exciting in the way you would expect it to develop, but less extraneous dialogue and more thrilling scenes would have been appreciated.