Review: Private Down Under

Private Down Under by James Patterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 Depending on which list you choose to use, this is either book 6 or book 7. Quite frankly, having listened to both, I'm still not entirely sure, but #7 makes more sense unless James Patterson just really doesn't care about continuity in this series.

Anyway, it's the grand opening for Private's latest office, located in Australia. With Los Angeles's second in command, Justine Smith on hand, Craig Guisto is ready to kick things off - which happens sooner than expected when a corpse literally crashes the party through the building's roof. But before the team can really start to look into the young Asian man's brutal murder, Justine gets a call from her sister (who inexplicably lives in Australia, unless I missed that part) that one of her neighbors has been killed, putting the Private team on the trail of two killers. And naturally, as is the norm, Private's involvement is not overly welcomed by the local police.

Okay, what's the deal with all the dead wives in this series? Once again, lead investigator Craig is widowed, setting the stage for his feud with his police officer cousin (a plot device also used in book-3-or-should-it-have-been-4?). This is the second book in which a plot device is redundant (books 1 and whatever number "Berlin" should really be both have fixed sporting events/gambling story lines), and as with my last review makes we wonder if the entire series is going to end up one redundant story after another.

The mystery of why all of Justine's sisters neighbors were being killed was at least interesting and had a nice twist to it. Though why they kept going out alone when they were getting picked off is a bit mind-boggling. The other story was a bit weak though - enough so that I don't entirely remember how it was ultimately resolved, so clearly, it didn't really captivate me that much.

Basically, so far with this series, I'm finding that I'm loving the books set in Los Angeles and the rest are just okay. And with the non-L.A. books "reading" more like stand alone novels than a part of the series, I'm not experiencing the redundancy in the little details issue that usually prevents me from devouring a series straight through like I am this one. So there are pros and cons and overall, I'm enjoying the books enough to continue listening to them.

(This book is also published as "Private: Oz" in some markets).


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