James Patterson, Sail Review

Overall Rating

I picked up Sail for a pound and I was surprised as it had only been released earlier on in the year. What a mistake. James Patterson's name may be plastered all over the front cover but beneath the title, Sail, is another, Howard Roughan. It feels like a hand holding excercise by Patterson and I couldn't see any of his trademark suspense or thrills that I had anjoyed with the Alex Cross stories. I managed to read the entire book in 4 hours. It felt like a holiday magazine short story eecked out across a pretty short novel. The paperback had large text and huge amounts of white space between chapters. To be honest halfway through a pretty likeable character was killed off and I almost gave up reading except that after another 10 minutes I'd almost got to the end. If I'd had bought this for the full retail price I'd have been really annoyed. I have always enjoyed Patterson's style, but this felt like a quickly produced, by the numbers novella released to fill a summer lull. Dreadly predictable and deadly boring.