25 Alive, James Patterson, Maxine Paetro, authors; January LaVoy, narrator
When a retired cop is found brutally murdered in a park, Sergeant Lindsay Boxer is the lead detective called to the scene of the homicide. Everyone knew how close Lindsay was to the dead man, and they tried to prepare her for the shock. She is horrified and saddened to discover that it is Warren Jacobi, the former Chief of Police who was once her partner. He had recently been forced to retire in disgrace, but most everyone thinks it was a mistake to force him out. Lindsay is married to FBI agent Joe Molinari, who is working on another murder case. While investigating in Mexico, he is involved in a shooting and is arrested there. Now Lindsay has something else to worry about besides the health of Martha, her beloved dog. She has to comfort her daughter Julie who is sad because the dog is absent and ill, and then so is her father.
Linday’s friend Claire Washburn, whose description often seems clichéd, is the Medical Examiner at the murder scene. She tries to comfort Lindsay. She is married to a musician, Edward Washburn. Yuki Castellano is also interested in solving the Jacobi case. Her husband, Captain Jackson Brady, is Lindsay’s boss. Yuki is the assistant District Attorney on another case involving a brutal murderer, Esteban Dario Garza. Garza is the son of a very wealthy man involved in a vicious drug cartel. Esteban has been accused of several horrific murders. Yuki’s case has involved threats of violence against the jury and the judge, also putting her in danger. Some of these threats of violence have been carried out. Cindy Thomas is a crime writer and a journalist. She leans on her husband for information in her own investigations. He is Richard Conklin, who is Lindsay Boxer’s partner on the San Francisco Police Force. Now you have been introduced to the four women who are all eventually interconnected in this investigation of a murderer who leaves clues behind with the words, “I said. You dead”. Lindsay, Claire, Yuki and Cindy, are members of “the women’s murder club”. They have now been activated in this 25th novel of the series. They are close friends who help each other to solve the crimes they work on, and they all knew Jacobi. Soon, most of them face danger as they search for facts.
The book’s narrative often seems trite and hackneyed with extraneous details and tangents that have nothing to do with solving the crime. The sickness of Lindsay’s dog, Martha, and her very, unusually intelligent daughter Julie’s sad reaction and resulting behavior as she expresses her love for the dog felt irrelevant, even though they added a very human touch to the story. The other investigations sometimes complicated the narrative as details about the lifestyles of the women were often included, adding nothing, but reducing the story to a beach read and/or chick lit. Their meetings devolved into discussions over dinner dates, pressured short meetings, and telephone calls in which they were always rushing in different directions. It is distracting to have to read about the muffins they were eating or the kibble being fed to the dog, when you really want the thriller to advance in a more exciting way. It is very charming to know that Lindsay sprinkles fish flakes into the fishbowl, and that the dog woofs and takes Julie to the school bus stop with her, but it seemed like nothing but nonsense to fill the pages. I don’t have to know that a character gets in a car and inserts a key and starts it. I assume anyone getting into a car will do that. It is no great achievement. There were too many sentences with verbiage that seemed insignificant.
In the end, I wasn’t sure which investigation was the most important, and the ending stretched credibility. I did learn who was the murderer who actually left the words, "I said. You dead.", but it felt anticlimactic.