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.”

I have become a fan of Agatha Christie.  I love her writing style and I love the twists and turns of her mystery novels.  They make for great reading and for great listening.  I listened to Evil Under the Sun in audio book.  I thinks it’s a great way to get introduced to one of Christie’s greatest characters, Hercule Poirot.

A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon, England is all that Hercule Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband’s feelings, revels in the attention of another woman’s husband. The scene is set for murder, but can the field of suspects really be as narrow as it first appears?

I love a book that makes you think and makes you constantly reevaluate you own conclusions.  I love the way that when the murderer is blatantly obvious, it’s not always the obvious choice.

I would recommend you read Evil Under the Sun .