I was pleasantly surprised by this, based on the last few of the newer Patterson books I’ve read. I enjoyed the first Michael Bennett novel, Step on a Crack, but found the manufactured emotion around his wife’s death to be so horribly schmaltzy that I almost gave up on the series. I didn’t read the second book, but you can enjoy this third book without reading either of the other two (though it does help to know why Bennett has 10 kids). Like many of Patterson’s villains, Francis X. Mooney is more than a little crazy, and his unpredictability adds the appropriate amount of suspense to the storyline. I liked the addition of FBI agent Emily Parker, and hope we haven’t seen the last of her. Patterson is still no longer a must-read author for me, but this novel gives me hope.