This book started off so well!!! While Michael Bennett has never been one of my favorite or most compelling Patterson protagonists, this looked to be a very interesting and different story than I've come to expect from the factory I suspect James co-writes most of his novels out of nowadays. Then, about half way through, it takes a sharp turn to crapsville.

One of my biggest complaints is the giving away of the villain right away. This book does such a great job of leaving in a mystery of who our Big Bad is, it's refreshing as a fan. But then, for no real reason I can fathom, they give away the goose and show us a name. And it isn't in the usual way of "Oh look at this character we've been building towards in subtle ways and now they're actually evil". It's out of the blue, and to me comes off as lazy.

The book also does a lot of set up for no real pay off. A sub plot romantic triangle forms, then breaks apart for no real reason, then restructures itself in the final 20 pages. There's also a sense that friends and family asked to have their names placed into the book, and those became various squad leaders and other characters who serve no purpose other than to deliver the exposition we need to get from place to place. This world feels like far too many cooks, even by New York standards.

All in all, this is a bigger issue than just this novel that I've noticed with later Patterson works. It might be part of the reason the Bennett series isn't one of my favorites. I admired Alex Cross and the Women's Murder Club from back when James actually wrote the things he attached his name to by himself. Those characters felt real, lived in, and like a real family. Lately though, the stories I'm seeing could have names swapped out and be considered standalone works. I can appreciate them for how easy they are to get folks into reading, but it's become a sad state of affairs hoping to crack open one of these stories and praying to climb above 2 stars.