Last night
as I was getting ready for bed I noticed on my night stand was a paperback copy
of the novel “Private” by James Patterson, a recent birthday gift from my
mother. This is the first in a new book series by Patterson. He’s mostly known
as the bestselling author of the Alex Cross series, the Women’s Murder Club
series, the Michael Bennett series, the Maximum Ride series, the Daniel X
series, the Witch and Wizard series, the Middle School series, and the Holy
Shit When Does This Guy Not Write series.
OK, I made
up the last one, but really is there anyone out there willing to admit they’ve
read all of this crap? Of course there is and that’s why he keeps pushing this
stuff out. I first read “Kiss the Girls” in 1995. It was the second book in the
wildly popular Alex Cross series which then turned into an unusually
forgettable Morgan Freeman movie and we all know there aren’t too many of them.
Anyway, I actually enjoyed the book immensely. It was my kind of book. It had
short chapters so my wildly short attention span wouldn’t drift away and the
end of each chapter had that hook, big or small, which made me want to read on
to the next chapter and so on and so on until I had finished the book. Shortly
after that I went back and read “Along Came the Spider” which is the first book
in the series. I enjoyed that as well. Over the following three years I read
each of the books that were published in the Cross series.
 |
| Where is Morgan Freeman? |
It was
shortly after that when a friend’s wife introduced me to the Women’s Murder
Club series. I got through about the first ten chapters of “First To Die”, when
I realized something. The bad guy in this story was no different than the bad
guys in the Alex Cross books I had read. The only thing that’s different was
the locale (San Francisco vs. Washington DC) and the hero became a heroine(s).
I never finished the book and I started to become wary of the author as the
endings of the Cross novels were becoming more and more ridiculous. I then
started noticing that whenever I walked into a book store there was a new
Patterson book being displayed or if I looked at the NY Times Best Seller list,
there was that same Patterson book. The guy had become a friggin whore. I was
done. Hell, in the last 4 years the gigolo has authored or co-authored 37
novels. That’s right 37! He’s crapping these things out at the pace of
practically a book a month. What does that translate into for pages per day? Come
on!!! That’s more crap than Anub used to produce each day at 1:15pm after lunch
at Ole’. Hey, I’m willing to give Patterson credit for the dedication he has to
his craft, and I certainly appreciate the thought my mother put into the gift
(she was the one who bought “Kiss The Girls” for me in ’95) but take a vacation
already James. You’re making the rest of us feel worse than we already do.
When are
Trey Parker and Matt Stone going to dedicate a South Park episode to this guy
and turn him into some Transformer/Swamp Thing/Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle
mutation? It reminds me of this:
In closing I
went to Google Images and put in the term “James Patterson Crapping Out Books”.
The first 8 images were either of Patterson or one of his book covers. Somehow
this was the next image that came up. It may not mean anything, but it’s funny
all the same.
