Author: James Patterson Title: London Bridges Genre: thriller
When my monthly issue of Consumer Reports appears in my mailbox, the first thing I do is flip it open to the inside back cover to read - and chuckle over - the regular feature they call "Selling It." Every month, CR readers submit their finds to the editorial staff, who then select the best examples of the "excesses of the marketplace." They find false advertising claims; instructions that contradict advertising claims, and deceptive packaging. This last is always one of my favorites - six-ounce bottle packaged in boxes big enough for a twelve-ounce Coke can; or multiple nests of cardboard and foam. At long last, I've found a product that I can send in to CR: James Patterson's latest, London Bridges can only be described as consumer fraud.
Ding-Dong, the Wolf is Back
When last we saw him, the Big Bad Wolf had just slipped through the fingers of the FBI - specifically, the Bureau's newest profiler, Alex Cross (hero of perhaps a dozen prior Patterson thrillers). That evil genius - probably a Russian Mafiyah gangster - had been dabbling in the white slave trade. Dabbling, that is, when he wasn't offhandedly killing anyone and everyone who crossed his path...
He's back, and Wolfie's got a brand new bag. The dude's gone global, having concocted a terrorist plot to blow up a bunch of world capitals if he doesn't get four billion US dollars and a gaggle of prisoners released by his deadline. Wolf's godlike omniscience and omnipotence, combined with his habit of putting one between the eyes of anyone who sees his face, make him one hard lobo to find; so our hero is having a rough go of it. Heck, Cross - and the FBI, CIA, Interpol, MI6, the Mossad, you name it - aren't even sure whether Wolf's male or female, much less what s/he looks like.
So some bridges get blown up: the Queensboro in New York City (made legendary by Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song") and London Bridge (made famous by a nursery rhyme), with plenty of pyrotechnics and the requisite thousands of innocents slaughtered. All that sturm und drang is so we know Wolf is serious about those demands.
Cross flits from coast to coast and even to other continents, apparently never accomplishing much but somehow always in the room when the Wolf makes his (her?) latest sinister call. He even gets to meet one of Wolf's minions and serve as messenger, motoring back into Paris with a real, live(?) suitcase nuke handcuffed to his wrist.
Of course we know how it will all end - this is Patterson writing, after all: Cross catches the Wolf, then finds out that his dead guy isn't really the Wolf, then watches as yet another possible Wolf dies. We can be sure of one thing and one thing only: Patterson didn't really kill off Wolf, because he has to milk him (her?) for another book in the series. Maybe more.
Selling It Like It Ain't
Patterson's Big Bad Wolf was bad enough, but at least there was some plot to it.London Bridges, on the other hand, is pure throwaway. Here's what's wrong with it:
A hackneyed plot: I don't know about you, but the terrorist-with-tactical-nuke plot has gotten old; very, very old. It's also strains the reader's belief that Wolf could escalate from white slaver to international terrorist overnight.
London Bridge - the one in Arizona (AronJohnson / wikimedia commons]
All meat and no potatoes: The book's like my Labrador Retriever: it's either going full speed ahead or it's asleep. The only two "settings" in London Bridges are full-out action and fluff. Chapters with the Wolf invariably end with yet one more brutal murder; chapters with Cross on the job never show him - or anyone else - doing anything that might actually help locate their tormentor. Chapters with Cross not on the job - and there are far too many of these - are pure filler, as he now has not just one butthree different relationships to waste pages on.
And the book's format: Here's a volume that's 391 pages long. Ought to be a good, long read, right? Wrong. There are 124 chapters, each of which has a blank half page at the beginning and (on the average) half a blank page at the end. Now we're down to 267 pages. Six sections have three blank pages each, which gets us down to 249 pages - an average of two printed pages per chapter. Now about that print: instead of the standard thirty-three or thirty-four lines of print per page, the leading is expanded to cut the number down to twenty-nine lines, a reduction of some 13.5% - which means that in a normal book, this story would take up about 215 pages (I won't even bother to talk about the wide-spaced font that further reduces type density). Then Patterson wastes even more time by inserting frequent interludes with Cross's kids in DC, his son and ex-girlfriend in Seattle, or his girlfriend in San Francisco - to the tune of about one every six chapters. Knock off another 15%, and we're down to 183 pages, a reduction of well over half. At that length, it's darned near a novella.
And It's Not All Structural
Had Patterson spent some time expanding the plot, it would have improved the book. For instance, at one point Cross's "Nana Mama" and two kids in DC (Damon and Jannie) are kidnapped, apparently by one of those multiple incarnations of Wolf. And held for five days. Such stress! Such worry! There's gotta be a District-wide manhunt, right? Wrong: on the fifth day Cross gets an email saying that they'll be released. They're released. Case closed. Patterson leaves plot threads dangling all over the book - is Klara really the Wolf? or is it the guy with the rubber ball? or maybe the one getting plastic surgery? do we even care any more?
It's a combination of hackneyed plot elements - Patterson's typical "Oops! wrong guy" subplot, the terrorist plot, the usual "mole in the group" subplot - and lack of interesting detail that kill this book. Instead of writing, the author spent all his time padding out the text; so much so that I think he ought to change his name to "Padderson." Skip this one (and skip everything else he writes until he gets off this padding kick).