Saturday 30 July 2011

Trial by James Patterson, a review

I like collecting books. Not expensive, first editions. Not signed copies. Just books in general. I like to see them all arrayed on my bookshelf, complete series, all the works of a novelist. They don't always have to be brand new. I usually buy them from charity shops, if I get the chance. Which is what I did with 'A Final Warning,' part of the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. I'd already read it but I didn't own it, so I thought it would make a nice addition to my bookshelf.
It was five minutes after I'd walked out of that shop that I remembered everything I'd hated about that book. Which got me thinking about other books of his that I'd read and how I'd been disappointed in those as well. But from what I know Patterson is primarily a crime writer. It didn't seem right to judge him based on his teenager works. So I decided to read a book from his Alex Cross series, which I gather is the one that made him as a crime writer.
And so I bought 'Trial.'
I read it. And I remain disenchanted.
The first thing to note is that it isn't actually an Alex Cross novel. It's set in the same universe but the actual events revolve around his grandmother's uncle and a lawyer acquaintance of his. Alex is mentioned in the foreword, only to say that he is writing the book himself by publishing the journals that the lawyer kept. So it's a book, containing a book that the character has written. Inception nonsense at it's best.
The general idea is that this lawyer, called Ben Corbett, is secretly sent by President Theodore Roosevelt to investigate reports of a mass increase of lynchings in the south. He is aided in this by Abraham Cross, the great uncle, and Moody Cross, his granddaughter. Once there, conventionally his old home town, he does next to nothing besides go and look at a few of the sites of these lynchings and start staggering about memory lane as if drunk. It's all there; the high school sweetheart who got left behind, the judge-mental father, the old best friend and the painful memories of his dead mother and of a lynching he himself once attended.
The plot moves along slowly until he gets in a fight to stop some white people drowning two black boys in a horse trough. As though realising that it's been quite a dull ride up until then the townsfolk kindly made it more exciting by lynching him in retaliation. They don't even make a good job of it. He survives, despite actively trying to kill himself halfway through. Obviously he was kind and wanted to help. Or maybe he was just embarrassed they'd done a half-assed job of it.
It goes back to boring, with him recovering at the Cross's house then managing to stumble into a Klu-Klux-Klan meeting. They don't do much, except try and show him that they're decent enough at heart by hanging someone in front of him. For some odd reason this doesn't work. But he was only a guest at this hanging, not an intended victim, so they let him go. Despite the fact that he's seen their faces he does not one thing about it, though in his defence the local Sheriff was one of the Klan's members.
Next word comes to him that a local gang were going to descend on the Cross household and possibly lynch them. He goes there and heroically defends them, taking several captive. These he does take to a local law man.
From there the book veers into a poor man's 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' but with a less balanced trial. I'm not going to relate everything that was dragged out in those pages. But I'll give it the dubious honour of at least making a bit of sense. Sense which was separate a bit later in the book, when the lawyer decided to anger the whole town then lay a trap for all those who came to beat him up. A riot ensued, which I'm sure did a whole lot for inter-racial brotherly love.
But it's not to say that the book didn't have good points. It is 485 pages long and I managed to get through it in roughly twelve hours, stopping occasionally to eat, watch stuff on Youtube and bang my head off a wall. It's nicely paced and reasonably engaging. I'm sure that if you're looking for some light reading then there's worse books you could buy than 'Trial.' But if you do read it be prepared do suspend your disbelief for a bit. And for that reason and those mentioned above I'm rating it at four out of ten.
As for me, I'm going to find one last James Patterson book, the first Alex Cross he wrote, and try and like it. If I don't then I'll try and find some other crime novelist who's main characters don't make me surprised that they don't die of stupidity. And when I do, I'll post the review right here for you.

I'm back

Well I said that I'd be back in August and I am, though only just. Jetlag seems to have kicked me hard and I'm still recovering in some ways, though I include the backlog of schoolwork as jetlag. I'm in a place with uncertain internet connection so I won't be putting out a short story tomorrow. Instead, here's a book review to tide you over.