Bookie's Favourite or Non-Runner? (The 5th Horseman - James Patterson)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	The 5th Horseman - James Patterson
Date:	29/11/07 (125 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better than previous Women's Murder Club efforts, fast-paced, highly readable

Disadvantages: Too many plots, unsatisfactory characters and ending

I have to confess that although I like James Patterson's books, I've never really taken to his Women's Murder Club series. Right from the start, it's always seen a little far-fetched; a bit twee and, well, Nancy Drew-ish to me. Nevertheless, having read all the others, when I saw this going cheap in a charity shop, I thought I might as well give it a go.

As you can imagine, my expectations weren't high, so I wasn't disappointed! Actually, by some standards, the Fifthth Horseman isn't a bad book. It's certainly very readable and I got through it in under two days, which must surely say something. As always, Patterson has a very enjoyable style, which really gives the book that element of compulsion. No matter how much you've read, there's always that urge to just read a little more before closing the book.

This is helped by the fact that Patterson writes in small chunks - chapters are usually just 2 or three pages long. This greatly increases that temptation to "just read another chapter" as you know if you start one, you'll be able to get to the next suitable stopping point quickly. Patterson's pacing is also excellent too. Due to the short chapters, he rarely concentrates for too long on one aspect of the plot or one character, switching between them rapidly. New plot strands or developments are introduced on a fairly regular basis too, to keep the interest levels up. In many ways, it's more like watching a TV show or a film than a book, with each of the short chapters relating to a new scene. It works surprisingly well when translated to the page.

The downside to this is that the book can be rather superficial. This is the fifth book in the series, and yet Patterson's portrayal of his lead characters are so sketchy that I feel I know them little better after five books than I did having read the first. Characters are treated very cursorily and, whilst this helps keep the pacing of the book fast, it's to the detriment of its emotional impact. Characters are introduced purely to be killed off a few pages later, leaving you almost shrugging "so what?". There's no emotional involvement, no shock value when these people die, because you don't know them or care for them. The best murder books get you to invest heavily in the characters, so that when they die you really feel you've lost someone you knew. Here, it has less emotional impact than reading about a murder case in a newspaper, and that's a serious problem.

Plot-wise, the book is a bit strange. There are essentially 3 plots - two different murder investigations and a courtroom scene. The trouble is that, as with Patterson's Judge and Jury which I reviewed a few weeks ago, none of these are really strong enough to stand on their own. Once again you get the feeling that Patterson had the germ of three different ideas, but not enough to make 3 books. His solution appears to have been to bung them all together under one title in the hope that no-one would notice. The end result is a bit of a mess.

As with the characters, there's simply not enough investment in the plot to make it worthwhile, and it remains very undeveloped. There's little sense of overlap between the cases - they are kept mostly separate. In fact, you can almost hear Patterson thinking "OK, I've done 20 pages on case 1, now I need to switch to case 2". One of the cases comes to a very abrupt halt halfway through and is resolved in a very hurried and unsatisfactory fashion. There's a definite feel of "oh, that was very... sudden." At the time, I wasn't too worried about this. I assumed Patterson would introduce one of his trademark twists and somehow interconnect all three cases, but it never happens. They remain very separate beasts.

The ending, too, is unsatisfactory. I often think endings are the most important part of a book. After all, it's the last thing you read (unless you're a bit strange!). A good ending, can stay with you for days, haunting you; a poor or mediocre ending can leave you feeling cheated that you've invested hours of your life reading the book only to have everything resolved on an unlikely co-incidence or stroke of luck. And so it is with The Fifth Horseman.

The second murder case, in particular, is a con. The culprit is revealed in literally the last couple of pages and actually leaves you with more questions than answers. How? Why? Where's the evidence? What happened to the others who were suspects? It feels like one of those rubbish cop TV shows you see where there's five or six really obvious suspects throughout, and then in the final minutes, the murderer is revealed to be a character you saw for approximately 12 seconds lurking in the background as an extra in the seventh minute. It's a con. It feels like a con and it leaves you feeling like you've wasted your time reading the rest of the book to be cheated in this way. That's a shame in many ways, because, although the book is not great, it is competent and readable, but it's badly let down by a lazy and convenient ending.

Oh, and you might be wondering where the title comes from. So was I for long periods of the book. When I picked it up, I thought it was going to be something to do with murders perhaps themed on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which I thought would make for an interesting plot. In fact, it has nothing at all to do with them. The reason for the title is revealed in a throwaway line by one of the characters right towards the end of the book. I suspect Patterson thinks it's quite clever. Personally, I felt it was cheesy and forced and, like the ending itself, a bit of a lazy cheat.

Despite all this though, the book remains highly readable. As I said, I read it in less than two days, which is always a good sign that you're getting fun out of something on some level. Part of me was disappointed that it never recaptured the sense of interest and excitement of Patterson's early novels, yet another part of me did enjoy it on a superficial level. The chances are though, I'm never going to read it again. As with Judge & Jury, I'd recommend that you either borrow it from the library or buy it second hand for as cheap as you can. I only paid £1.50 for it, and certainly got that much enjoyment out of it. Had I paid full price, I would have felt swindled.

Basic Information
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The 5th Horseman
James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Headline Books, 2006
ISBN: 978-0755323074 (hardback)

Available new from Amazon £6 or second hand from £0.01

© Copyright SWSt 2007

Summary: Bit of an old nag, but not quite time for the knacker's yard.