I’m just barely getting started with this older series.  I read one Patterson years ago and decided it was too gory for me. When he started his Women’s Murder Club mysteries I kind of looked sideways at them, but it was too late, I was allergic to Patterson at that point. 

9th Judgement 
by James Patterson/Maxine Paetro 
2010 / 
Read by Carolyn McCormick 6h 44m
Rating/ A- : thriller – procedural 
(#9 in Women’s Mystery Club series)

I’m just barely getting started with this older series.  I read one Patterson years ago and decided it was too gory for me. When he started his “Women’s Murder Club” mysteries I kind of looked sideways at them, but it was too late, I was allergic to Patterson at that point.  Except for The President Is Missing which he did with Bill Clinton – I enjoyed that okay – (not great but okay) (Links to my reviews on this site.)

Years went by during which I developed a habit of reading Christmas mysteries in December.  This started with 1 or 2 per season but this past year it was 6 Christmas stories. (I save them up during the year.)

So one of them turned out to be the Patterson/Paetro novel The 19th Christmas (“Women’s Murder Club” #19 – 2021! ).  I liked that one so much I went back and tried the first one in the series, 1st to Die. Oops! That was too graphic again and without Paetro something it seemed something was missing.  

Then the other day, finding myself between books and unable to pick one, I noticed this series at the library which doesn’t usually have what I want but occasionally surprises me.  I’ll gladly get a lot of these crime books from the library.  So I got #9 now but I’ve read #s 19, 20 and 21 from Audible. (The library seems to have the whole series!)

I think this is standard-issue Patterson in that the violence is over-the-top. But I like the characters and the interaction between them.  Yes, there’s still too much sex for my tastes and it’s used as a tension reliever from the fem-jeop (females in jeopardy) action of the main story which I find rather perverse.  But the plots are also good, complicated and nicely twisted.  In 9th Judgement there were 3 tenuously related plot threads going. 

I’ll likely plod along with Paetro at my own pace – when I’m between books and nothing looks particularly enticing and I know I can get it at the library – and when it’s been a few months since my last Patterson book.