I suspect the co-author credit was a last-minute addition to the book: the uncorrected galley circulated for review lists Gross only on the front cover; the title page has only Patterson’s name; the copyright page mentions only Patterson; and, on the back cover, Gross’s name doesn’t appear anywhere.

All right, enough of that. Let’s talk about the book. Well, the premise of this series is rather implausible: San Francisco homicide detective Lindsay Boxer gets together with her friends - a newspaper reporter, an assistant district attorney, and a medical examiner - to solve the cases that her own police department is unable to crack. In the first novel, the Women’s Murder Club tracked down a killer who preyed on newly-married couples; this time around, it’s a killer whose victims seem to have nothing in common...until Lindsay and her friends discover a chilling connection that points to a murderer very close to home.

I suppose you could say that most of Patterson’s novels begin with implausible premises; the Alex Cross mysteries, for example, depend on our accepting the existence of one fiendishly clever nutcase after another. And, since Patterson writes the Cross novels so brilliantly (except Violets are Blue, the recent, and very disappointing, installment of the series), we do accept the unlikely plot lines, because he makes them seem believable. Similarly, Patterson writes these Women’s Murder Club novels so well that we accept the notion that a cop, a reporter, a D.A., and a coroner would work outside the law to bring killers to justice. Lindsay and her friends are well crafted characters, their dialogue frequently sparkles, and the stories contain enough clues, false leads, and twists to keep us flipping pages at a frenzied pace.

--David Pitt