Booke Review: Beach Road
I have been a reader of James Patterson’s for a very long time. I originally developed a love for his Alex Cross series of book and then on to his numerous collaborations with other authors. Beach Road is one of those collaborations. Patterson, along with Peter de Jonge. It is a typical Patterson book, short chapters, easy to understand characters and you are IMMEDIATELY immersed into the action. But this book has teeth, and it bites, even to the very end.
In the opening chapters of Beach Road, we are introduced to a series of characters with whom Beach Road is narrated.
Tom Dunleavy is a small-time lawyer who lands a big case when three young men he plays basketball with are found shot to death execution-style at a billionaire’s basketball court. The evidence points to a rising high-school basketball star, Dante Halleyville, who scuffled with one of the other young men earlier on the day of the murder and who apparently was seen disposing of the gun used to commit the murders. Tom reluctantly takes the case, convincing his ex-girlfriend, Kate Costello, a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan, to help him prove Dante innocent. The novel races toward a conclusion so shocking that even longtime Patterson devotees won’t see it coming. - Kristine Huntley
I listened to Beach Road on audio, and as usual I enjoyed Patterson’s work, but I will tell you, I hated the ending. It fit the book, made sense, and was an AMAZING twist. All that being said, the ending really bothered me. Was it a ‘happy ending’? Sort of…as my wife, Sarah-Irene said, “Good guy wins. Bad guy loses. Woman realizes most men stink and dog gets a good home.”
