Private London

I would like to give this book 10 stars!!!!
This series is getting better each book, Jack Morgan has the reach all over the world. The team he has in London is really unique, the women have it going on. They really know their stuff, specially Suzy Malone an ex-police, Kristy Webb (Dan Carter ex-wife) detective inspector, Dr. Wendy Lee
Dan Carter is the head of the London office with Sam Riddel second in charge ( right-hand man).
Dan got an assignment to protect Hannah Shapiro because she had been kidnapped before because of her father the scientist working on some sort of detecting machine that is bad in the wrong hands, she and her mother were taken and the mother didn’t make it and the ransom was not paid and Jack went to find her.
Now Dan has the pleasure to watch her so he sent his goddaughter to keep a close tab on her by befriending her at the same college (Chloe Smith Dan’s captain in the Royal Military police that saved his life and promised to care for his daughter because he got shot and died in his arms).
And then Hannah got kidnapped again, a man in a car got hit by a train and died and his wedding ring finger got cut off in the hospital while he just got his heart taken for a transplant that other people were getting their finger cut off also.
Stuff hit the fan at once and Jack couldn’t come so he sent his right-hand man Del Rio (he is bad to the bone) .
Then you have badass women on the bad side that arranged the kidnapping of Hannah and it turned bad quick.
I don’t want to tell you all of this book you won’t have anything to look forward to.
You got to read this WOW!!!!
YOU WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED!!!! Especially a James Patterson fan.

Patterson returns with a ‘Private’ entry – this time set in London. Private is the world wide private detective/security agency headed by Jack Morgan. His London counterpart – Dan Carter is tasked with protecting the traumatized daughter of a wealthy client when she attends school in England.

Hannah Shapiro was kidnapped as an adolescent and witnessed unspeakable acts against her mother. Years later she is trying to put her life together and the past behind her. But the past has a way of finding you ….

Carter’s ex-wife is pursuing another case – young women are turning up dead, their organs apparently harvested. She pursues the case and tries to put distance between herself and her ex.

The book is typical Patterson – short chapters, a quick read. He isn’t Hemmingway and some of the plot devices are convenient, and some of the connections are a stretch but the twists in the plot keep the pages turning. Worth an afternoon.

Patterson has developed a good literary vehicle with the Private series to assure sales in that he can vary the locale and therefore the protagonists based on which international office this particular Private adventure will be taking place in. The problem Paterson is running into is the inconsistency of style caused by the multiple co-authors used in the series along with a high frequency of publication.

That said, our heroes are enjoyable in the sense that they do have the advantage of solving crimes without having to be bound by local laws (they’re private detectives not cops and somehow get away with a number of ‘shortcuts’). This adds pace and unfortunately for our society some satisfaction to some of these stories. Private London was an “OK” read, but it was extremely predictable with the usual bad guys. Al Qaeda are not nice people. Israel and the rest of the Middle East don’t see eye to eye. Kidnapping is evil. OK. I get that. Enough already. Find another vehicle for the antagonists.

I think that the best of the Private series were “Private” and “Private #1 Suspect”. They were both written with Maxine Paetro, co-author with Patterson of the famed Women’s Murder Club books. There just seemed to be more substance and less filler in those two entries.

Next up in January is Private Berlin…this one with Mark Sullivan who co-authored Private Games. Patterson is churning these out much too fast…but that is what happens with many franchise authors. Makes you feel that e-books have become the new paperbacks…just change the titles and characters names and let ’em rip. I think I’ll wait for the reviews on Private Berlin before ordering it or better yet, look for more substantive authors.

I think this is the most blatant of Patterson’s series creations. It’s in existence simply to put titles on the shelves. Patterson does the outline (so we’re told) and the collaborator writes the book. Private London is not written by Patterson, it’s written by Mark Pearson, who is a good crime novelist. But one gets the feeling he’s restricted to adhere to Patterson’s outline. The story could have been darker, more intriquing, etc. The characters were good, the plot decent. But the confines of the Private series seem to keep this entry a “TV movie” as opposed to a thriller.

A good, quick read, as will all the Private books be, no doubt. It’s actually refreshing going into a book with low expectations, as one can always be pleasantly surprised with certain elements of the story. Jack Morgan is no Alex Cross and since the first book in the series, I don’t think Morgan will enter into things much from here on in. Meaning, we’ll meet new protagonists from each city. Kind of reminds me of the Marvel Comic’s concept of The Avengers.

It’s a fun read but there’s nothing here we haven’t read before. Pearson’s good though. One wouldn’t go amiss by reading some of his Jack Delaney books.

Who wrote this book? As an example of Patterson’s work…well, it wouldn’t have enticed me. I bought it because I had enjoyed a number of other Private titles. But this one was far, very far, from the calibre of the others. The story was thin, the lead admirable character a little too flawed for his job and too given to mewling about his own foibles. One began to wonder if he really could grapple with and solve the piggybacked kidnap cases. The unsavory characters were not fully drawn, but what was revealed was too rudimentary to give readers any sort of idea about how this particular set of slimebags operated. I almost put it aside half a dozen times–not least because several characters used the same hackneyed cliches several times, displaying incredibly lazy writing and/or editing–and I can’t say I’m glad I didn’t. I probably should have, but then I wouldn’t have found out what a cop out the conclusion was. All in all, if I were Patterson, I’d unpublish this one; it could easily ruin his reputation.

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