Book Review: 1st To Die

Book: 1st To Die (Women's Murder Club book #1) by James Patterson

Edition: Paperback

Rating: 3 stars

Review:

Oh, this started out so well then fizzled near the end.

1st To Die follows Police Detective Lindsay Boxer as she tries to solve the brutal murder of a wealthy newlywed couple. Assisting Lindsay is the Mayor's Community Actions Liaison, Captain Chris Raleigh but the additional help wasn't getting her any closer to finding the killer. Especially as more bodies of newlyweds were being found and add that with leads that go nowhere, this case was becoming extremely difficult. 

Working those tireless hours together started to bring out a romantic chemistry between Lindsay and Chris. However, she was reluctant to start any sort of relationship with him because she was dealing with a health problem.

When a break in the case leads Lindsay to a well known writer, is it possible that he's the killer?

Needing more insight into this case, Lindsay secretly worked with her good friend Claire Washburn, the city's Chief Medical Examiner and Cindy Thomas, a reporter for the Chronicle that Lindsay decided to work with. Later on Jill Bernhardt, the Assistant District Attorney was added to the group that would later become the Women's Murder Club.

As I mentioned above this started out so good, it was fast-paced and the story was very interesting and suspenseful as Lindsay and Chris tried to track down the killer. However, the story fell into quite a few clichés and also the pacing slowed to a crawl. There were a couple of twists that I saw coming a mile away that left the ending feeling really underwhelming.

I was disappointed in the character development or should I say the lack there of for Claire, Cindy, Jill and Chris. I got to know a great deal about Lindsay while the others could have benefited from more time allotted to flesh them out more.   

This wasn't a bad read but it could have been much better. With that said, I'm still interested in reading the second book.