What do You think about Black Friday (2000)?
#44Pretty sure this was my first James Patterson book, but I have 4 more in the pile I inherited so I am about to get to know him VERY well!! I like his writing style as it lends itself very well to my desire for short chapters and keeping background information simple. When I pick up a thriller/mystery book I just want interesting/intelligent characters, a plausible plot & then some good action with just enough twists to make it surprising. Patterson met all the criteria for me *expect* for the Plausible Plot. Anything that ends up being about some secretive group of puppet masters supposedly running the world for years and managing to amass ridiculous power & wealth and I get a wee bit bored. Plausibility lost. However, the characters and action kind of make up for that weakness and I really really did love the ending.
—Christina
Early James Patterson trying (and failing) to write a Ludlum/Clancy-esque thriller. The conspiracy was actually very interesting and well done (albeit very 1980sish) but Patterson bogs his tale down with cliches, love stories and cliched love stories that are inessential to the plot. This is but the second Patterson book I've read but his other one followed the same vein. Baldacci is like that too. It just doesn't work for me guys, two beautiful people (including a usually underwritten female character) falling in love while the world crumbles around them. But Patterson and Baldacci are two of the best-selling writers in the world so what do I know?
—Jake
This Patterson crime-suspense novel from the late eighties is an interesting read today from our perspective in the next century. The plot of a terrorist attack on New York City and the crash of the stock market and hence the world economy somehow seemed much more apocalyptic thirty years ago than it does today---probably because it all happened and we lived through it. Not in the same way of course, or in the same order and not by the same enemy and with a totally different outcome---somehow a secret government cabal in the computer age seems even more difficult to buy---but many of the things he imagined have taken place. The world has suffered, people have lost their lives and many other dangerous events undoubtedly lie ahead but we have stumbled along and survived. I guess that shows that mankind always looks into the abyss of change and shudders but predicting the outcome is a challenge. I recently saw a cartoon of a robed man standing on a street corner holding a sign with the cliché citation “The End Is Near”. He was happily explaining to passers-by that it was his fifteenth anniversary on that corner. I guess that says it all.
—Keith
