By most standards, this book is a disappointing read. The characters are one-dimensional; the plot is implausible and shot through with holes. The quick pace, however, kept me hanging on till the end. With its myriad faults, it misses the acceptable range, but if you’re looking for mind candy, Step on a Crack fits the bill.

Former President and First Lady Stephen and Caroline Hopkins are having a romantic anniversary dinner at a posh New York restaurant. Caroline takes one bite and goes into respiratory distress. She’s rushed to the hospital, but nothing can be done to save her.

Narrator Michael Bennett is a homicide detective with the NYPD. Previously, he’d been on the Hostage Negotiation Team. His beloved wife Maeve is hospitalized with terminal cancer. They have ten (that’s right: ten!) multi-ethnic, adopted children. Mike is surprised and grateful when Mary Catherine, an au pair from Ireland, shows up at his door to help run the household. His grandfather Seamus, a priest, also lends a hand.

Caroline Hopkins’s funeral is held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. In attendance are many A-list celebrities. During the service, a group of hooded monks walk down the center aisle. They pull out high power weapons and take the entire assemblage hostage.

Mike is called to the scene. No one quite knows what has happened other than that three thousand people – mostly celebrities and VIPs – are being held hostage. Is this a terrorist attack? How could this happen at Caroline Hopkins’s funeral with its heavy security?

The FBI, headed by negotiation expert Paul Martelli, arrive shortly afterwards. Martelli literally wrote the book on handling such situations. The various authorities wait anxiously for some communication of demands from the hostage-takers. When the call comes, Mike speaks with a man who identifies himself as Jack, but the usual hostage negotiation techniques seem ineffectual.

Caught in a vise between competing demands, Mike struggles to end the hostage crisis and manage his personal family crisis, all at the same time.

And if that isn’t enough, it’s only a few days before Christmas, and the ten Bennett kids are in the Christmas pageant.

James Patterson has teamed with a co-author to crank out a novel that mixes the ingredients of a made-for-TV crime drama and a Lifetime-TV-tear-jerker-of-the-week. The result is predictably unimpressive. The chapters are short, the logic is weak. (What are the chances that the only politicians or government officials at the funeral of a former First Lady would be her husband and the mayor of New York?). The dying wife is heroic, the kids are preternaturally adorable, the priest grandfather is straight out of central casting (think of Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way), the whodunit is completely over the top. The hostage drama scenes provide some needed tension and momentum, but they’re bogged down by the weight of the rest of the story line.

It seems likely that this is just the first installment in a series starring Mike Bennett and family. I won’t be waiting for the next installment with bated breath and I theorize that Step on a Crack will work best for readers who are totally nonjudgmental or who, like me, are too sick to quibble.

--Lesley Dunlap