Private Berlin

This story takes place primarily in Germany when the communists took it over and after the Berlin Wall came down. That appealed to me because I was in Germany for a couple of days a few years ago and vividly remember seeing parts of the Berlin Wall and a few of the guard stations that were left standing for tourists to see. We the reader almost immediately learns that a team of investigators are trying to track one of their own who is missing. Mattie, who is associated with the team, had been engaged to Chris – also on the team – has been missing for at least a day. Mattie and her family and a few people become real for me in this story. This book also used an interesting device in which periodically a chapter was written in the first person but without that person letting the reader know the name of who was speaking. This make it both cryptic and kind of scary or “yucky”, giving a sense of what kind of person the killer might be.

What I didn’t particularly like was that quickly, as the investigation increased, too many people and names were introduced without my being able to take them in as real persons or having a sense of who they are. That aspect seems like too many details and overly complicated. Through most of the broad middle of the book, I felt as if Grisham was off his game or that he or Sullivan wrote separately; I was quite disappointed.

I learned history as I red this book which was hard to put down. As I red I was reminded of man’s inhumanity to man and I was reminded of the civil wars that are being fought in the world currently. The book is fast paced and the characters are interesting and developed well enough that as I red I was able to connect with them. Not all of the characters were likeable.

Patterson brings back the people of Private – Berlin chapter. Private is a worldwide investigative agency headed by Jack Morgan. He has offices in LA, London, Berlin …. and plenty of work to keep his operatives busy.

Private Berlin opens with a missing operative: Christoph Schneider. After taking several personal days he has failed to check in with the office. A former fiance, Mattie Engel knows that Chris is meticulous about procedure and believes something is amiss. The personnel of Private have the option of having a chip implanted so they can be found, and Chris has one. But to activate it? What if they are overreacting and barge in on a personal moment?

Eventually they decide Chris is at risk and activate the chip – following the signal to a former slaughterhouse in the countryside. The house of horrors leads to follow up on Chris’ investigations. He was assigned to a soccer player that was being wooed by a major team, a philandering husband and had taken a case of his own… Did one of these lead to trouble?

The three cases are investigated and Mattie finds herself learning about the man she almost married.

Typical Patterson – short chapters, easy to read. Some convenient plot devices and some thin characters but worth the time it will take you to read it if you are a fan of the series.

James Patterson and Mark Sullivan’s “Private Berlin” is a thriller. From the very first page to the last, this book will keep you in suspence. Who is this mystery man and why does he want to kill off six grown people? What happened just before the fall fo the Berlin Wall? What secrets to they all share? Why was Private’s skilled investigator murdered? There are many questions as to keep you guessing in your own mind as to who this killer maybe. You won’t want to put it down. This was a three day read for me for I just wanted to keep reading to learn what and why. Woven into the six people are others. Were they the victim of the same thrill killer? Perhaps not, and yet…… A former Russian soldier who now runs a well know drag night club, what is his involement, if any? Could he be this thrill killer? Then there is the man in the mask who visits a house of proititution in Frankfurt, Germany. Why were a mask? Is he trying to concell a secret too? Does the high commissar, Herr Dietrich also have secrets he has kept from the Berling Kripo (police)? This story covers from the poor to the very rich and how the rich want more and more.

Private Berlin

I’ve managed to avoid reading anything by James Patterson. Not easy to do given how prolific he is as an author. As some others have said, he may be “too” prolific, relying on co-authors to help him get more books out there. The same thing happened with Tom Clancy when he started using co-writers…the quality suffered, big-time.

OK, to start with, the book is about things happening in Berlin. Which just happens to be in Germany. Which just happens to be in Europe. Where they use the metric system. Just how hard can it be to convert feet to meters? To convert miles per hour to kilometers per hour? Apparently either the author(s) and/or the editors either didn’t catch that or didn’t think it was that big a deal.

Another thing which bugged me more and more as I got further into the book, is that the characters use American terms and slang in their speech. You could have dropped this novel into rural America, or even a major American city, with absolutely no re-editing to change to American terms.

This lack of attention to detail (using American language, not using the metric system) is off-putting, to put it mildly.

So, if you’re a BIG Patterson fan, you may enjoy this…if you don’t mind having the plot and dialogue be “dumbed-down”.

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