The 5th Horseman by James Patterson

Title: The 5th Horseman

Author: James Patterson

Genre: Mystery

Summary: A series of death at one of the largest hospitals bring the public focus onto quality of care.

The Take-Away: This issue is rather timely as all of us face rising insurance premiums and increased profit margins of those providers. The normal Patterson twists made it interesting and kept me guessing as to what would come next.

One of the email loops I'm in recently discussed Patterson and the quality of his writing. The most frequent criticism was the lack of character development, both in his serials and his stand-alones. I like Patterson and have ever since I read "Along Came a Spider." His characters develope over several books and while it is important to know the characters, he is writing thrillers. Is it really that important to know the motivating forces or to know who the bad guys are and how the good guys are going to beat them?

I also got the feeling that most of these comments came from people who read a limited numbers of genres, most of which are not thriller or mystery. Character development in this genre is thinner than say Romance or its many subdivisions. When reading about falling in love, the need for character motivation shows in the development of the character. Thrillers are all about catching the bad guys.

Recommendation: Read it, but realize that it is about catching bad guys. This title also varies from the norm in its social commentary on the health care systems.

Women's Detective Club Series Titles

• 1st to Die - no review
• 2nd Chance - no review
• 3rd Degree - no review
• 4th of July
• The 5th Horseman

Other books read in March