Step on a Crack, by James Patterson with Michael Ledwidge

Rating: 2 stars

Summary: The First Lady mysteriously dies during a Christmas-week dinner with the President. Her state funeral at a church in New York City is hijacked, with the hostages being among the richest and the most famous people in the United States. In comes Detective Michael Bennett, a man with ten adopted children and a wife dying of cancer in the hospital. It’s up to Bennett to negotiate with the hijackers to get as many of the hostages out alive, meanwhile trying to bring Christmas cheer to his numerous little ones at home. The hijackers are well-prepared against Bennett, escaping almost unscathed from their dangerous game, and completely unknown to the NYPD. Bennett makes it his personal mission to find these unfindable criminals and bring them to justice, before they take him out, too.

Review: Where’s Alex Cross when you need him? This book received two stars on the basis that I admire Patterson’s use of real military language, and for the grand scale of the novel. However, mixing a romance novel with a thriller is not my cup of tea. Hijackers beating up bimbo popstars…awesome. A grown man tearing up at his wife’s bedside ever other freaking minute…not awesome. You loved her, Bennett, we get it. Now be a man and stop crying. You have children and a hijacking to attend to.

Had the book been strictly a thriller, it probably would have garnered 3.5 stars (I can’t help it, a “fluff” book, as my mother and I terms books with no intrinsic value, will never garner more than 3.5 stars, unless it is absolutely marvelous). The basic scheme is pretty cool…hijack a state funeral and keep very rich, very important people until you get their money and make a brilliant escape. The tactics used, both by the hijackers and the law enforcers, were pretty cool. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing. The vignettes of Eugena Humphrey and Conlan and Rooney brought a surprising empathy to the novel. I also liked the switchover in point of view from Bennett to the Neat Man. The somewhat surprising ending was good too.

What held the book back was the god-awful family scenes. Okay, the kids were sometimes cute, you can’t go wrong with a character named Mary Catherine (you just can’t), but the oh so strong wife wasting away to 80 pounds who is so thin and fragile when she used to be the big-hearted glue that held our family together, I don’t know how she did it…vomit. If that was Patterson’s attempt to get more female readers, he has failed miserably. No one reads a thriller for the wife with cancer bits. They like the crimes, the solving of the crimes, the escapades surrounding the crimes, all the mystery and intrigue and adrenaline. For the love of god, Patterson, don’t alienate your reader!

And who is this Michael Ledwidge that wrote the book with Patterson? Is it just me, or did they hide that fact? Granted I was reading a strip (a book with no front cover…its bookstore lingo), but it says nowhere on the rest of the cover that there was a second author involved. In fact, I didn’t know there was a second author until I got to the “About the Author” the section and “Author” was pluralized, and there were two names and descriptions below it. (Okay, I’ve just looked at a picture of the cover, and Ledwidge is listed, but I’ve walked by the book a thousand times and not noticed it.)

Many years ago, I read Cat and Mouse. I think I may have even seen the movie Along Came a Spider. What I deduce is this: Alex Cross is badass. Michael Bennett is a pansy in comparison. Which means, Patterson, that you need to write about Alex Cross, not Michael Bennett.