guilty wives

guilty wives
james patterson & david ellis
fiction/mystery/suspense/thriller
little brown & co.
published 2012

Abbie Elliot gave up her life to follow her diplomat husband to Zurich. Now, she and her three best friends are in desperate need of a weekend getaway and decide it's the perfect time for a fling in Monte Carlo. They surrender themselves to every temptation: fine dining, high-stakes gambling, and gorgeous men. But the fun comes to a screeching halt when two bodies are found, and they become the police's prime suspects. In a dramatic trial, the women's lives are laid bare. It becomes clear that they have been framed, but one question remains: Who is trying to lock them away forever? 

I've complained quite a bit about James Patterson books.  I've found that most of the books he co-writes (in which I believe the newbie author writes and he just slaps his name on) to be awful.  They are usually full of annoying italics and horrible catch phrases.  I pick them up out of habit and I'm usually angry that I wasted my time on them.

This one was much better than the others.  Abbie was both likeable and obnoxious at the same time, but no matter, you still respected her.

I finished the book in a couple of hours.  Like any Patterson novel it was a super quick read.  The only real problem I had was that it starts out 6 weeks into Abbie prison sentence and they call that the 'Prologue'.  After a few chapters they go back in time to the infamous trip to Monte Carlo and then the circus on a trial resulting in the prison scene we saw in the beginning.  Throughout the entire trial section I was incredibly bored.  I already knew they were going to jail because they revealed that in the first few chapters.  Sure, it's a little interesting to see the interrogation part, but really, I couldn't care less about the trial.

So things didn't really get interesting until you caught up with the beginning of the story and even then you're pretty sure you know what happened.  Nevertheless, out of the last few co-authored books Patterson has done, this one is probably one of the best.

No doubt about it.