i just finished Patterson's new book, The Beach House. I breezed through it in a couple days and thought I'd post my initial feelings here.
I only recently came across Patterson's books and have only read 1st To Die (which I thought was a little far fetched, but a fast entertaining read), Pop Goes the Weasel, and Roses are Red. I enjoy his short, fast moving chapters and sustained energy.
That said, I was quite eager to be the first on my block to get a sneak peek at his new thriller. Unfortunately, this book is no blood and guts thriller. It*s more of a murder mystery... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, if it didn*t have a completely hoakie plot. I thought this book was a poor representation of what Patterson is capable of. It's still a fast paced read but the plot seemed to me to be completely unrealistic and loosely held together with random afterthoughts. Most of the characters seemed to have multiple personalities, doing things way out in left field with little or no explanation. I found myself scratching my head a lot, thinking "where's the logic in that?" or "what are the chances this would happen like this?" (no one sees a character in 5 months and then suddenly in the middle of nowhere group A stumbles across him/her and 10 minutes later in a different middle of nowhere group B finds him/her).
Many times when reading a good book, you remember peculiarities throughout the story and find them neatly tied together at the end. I didn't have that feeling with this book. As I stated earlier, it seemed to be patched together with afterthoughts.
If you don't care whatsoever about logic or realism, you might like this book. It moved along well enough and wasn't boring or hard to read... but there*s no way I would recommend paying hardcover price for it. I'm a big fan of the other Patterson books I've read but this one frustrated me. Wait for the paperback.