Sail

Today I finished Sail by James Patterson & Howard Roughan. Now I buy my books all the time. At flea markets, bookstores, garage sales, wherever I find them I'll buy them. But I also go to the library and check out 8 to 10 books at a time so I end up having lots of books on my bookshelves that I bought 6 months or a year ago and haven't read yet. That being said, I recently caught up on some books and found that I don't care for James Patterson's duo novels. I've read every adult fiction novel he's written and somewhere along the way I was buying and reading his books out of habit and not because I loved them.

Don't get me wrong, the Alex Cross novels are still one of my favorite series, but mostly because I love the characters. Lately, the books he shares authorship on are muddled and unbelievable with cutesy phrases sprinkled a little too liberaly and lots of italics.

However, Sail was a much better installation into the Patterson library. Howard Roughan also co-wrote You've Been Warned. I hated that book. It made no sense and it was so far out of the realm I couldn't imagine reading another book with Roughan's name on it, but I bought Sail before I read You've Been Warned so I was stuck.

Sail centers around Katherine Dunne, her three children and former brother-in-law as they take to the high seas for a vacation meant to bring the fractured family together. Of course nothing goes right aboard the cursed boat once they set sail and the Dunnes are forced to fight for their lives after a series of deadly 'accidents' befall them. Nothing and no one are what they seem in this fast paced thriller.

The story was still a little jumpy. Patterson's habit of starting a new chapter every 4 pages is prevalent, but the characters were fun to root for, the antagonist a delight to loathe. Because of the jumpy storyline there seemed to be a few characters I thought would have more to do with the plot than they ended up being. Since you already know who the bad guy is it isn't necessary to get the suspicions from all of the background characters. Maybe spending more time on the Dunne family surviving or developing Peter Carlyle's character beyond new husband to Katherine Dunne might have been better than getting short little backstories on the Search & Rescue Lieutenant or the DEA Agent not on the case.

All in all it was a good read. Much better than You've Been Warned and Honeymoon, but not quite as good as Patterson's older works.