The Medical Examiner



Author: James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Pages: 144
First Published: August 2017
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Book description (from Good Reads): Two bodies arrived at the morgue. One was still breathing. A woman checks into a hotel room and entertains a man who is not her husband. A shooter blows away the lover and wounds the millionaires, leaving her for dead. Is it a perfect case for the Women's Murderer Club or just the most twisted?

Note: This is the 16.5 installment of the Murderer Club series and it is the first book I read. I read them out of order obviously, it seems I like to do that recently. But in reality as I was reading it did not feel like I was missing anything, maybe the backstory of how the woman mentioned here met, but well it can still be read separately from my POV at least you understand the story without issue, I will go back and start on book one and work my way up from there.

Things to consider:
  1. Characters: 8.0 
    1. Initially, our lovely alive corpse, Joan, gives the impression of being too superficial, and truth be told she was arrogant. You come to like her better at the end. Even if you find her hilarious oh my the extent a woman can go in order to save her image. 
    2. The other characters the medical examiner and the reporter, they each play a small part of the story initially I wasn't sure why they had a focus at all, if they could be taken out after their small part of finding the corpse was actually alive, but they wrap up good toward the end and I assume that they also appear on any of the previous stories. 
    3. The couples portrayed are very realistic and face their troubles quite nicely even if it might feel a bit like the overall storyline does not need this details, it is a story you might be more interested in because of the characters than the plot, that might be the intention of the authors. 
  2. Plot: 7.0 
    1. The story line initially feels a bit farfetched but after looking at it intently, it does make sense. Money can move mountains and people care more about image than they should even going as far as choosing to live double lives in order to present to society what they deemed as the perfect life. 
    2. If you want to be seen as perfect, have the perfect marriage, have the perfect house… It does not make you happy, lie your way around and pretend everything is cool, when things go south, do not accept the truth keep lying and making things up as you go along…. That seemed to be the plan here until it could no longer sustain itself. 
    3. The reveal, it's not overly shocking, but at least I did not see it coming until it was almost done. The mystery is there with just enough hints to drive the poor investigator crazy for a bit as he placed the puzzle pieces together. 
    4. Some of the details in this story seem like a way to get some characters a bit of time in the story and could have easily been taken out, this story is definitely a filler for books with lot more plot points, the story is very short and it really 
  3. Logic: 8.0 
    1. I do not agree with the decisions people take in here but it does make sense, the wish to preserve a certain image to society, the desire to live free of the lies society is seeing, the wish to deny what it's right in front of your eyes because it is better not to accept the true… The portrayal of people is buyable. Except for the way things wrap up, the discovery of the true criminal and the confession do not make perfect sense to me, but oh well the ending had to happen some way. 
  4. Writing Style: 7.0 
    1. It is a fast read, very simple dialog and storytelling. I am no expert on either author nor I am knowledgeable of how exactly coauthored books differ from the regular single authored stories, I did not see the difference in the chapters, I was unable to tell which parts were being created by an specific author: other than the fact that it felt like some of the character lives were simply added to make the story longer not because they were necessary for the story to be told. 
  5. Intrigue: 6.0 
    1. The story does really not work with suspense or anticipation, it simply entertains. 
  6. Enjoyment 6.0 Not horrible but nothing spectacular either: it was a nice fast read, something to enjoy your time without the need to be very focused on the plot twists and turns. A nice comfortable read. 
  7. Intention: 8.0 
    1. The morale here is: Live your life for yourself and not other people otherwise someone is going to find out how unhappy you are when they try to kill you and you are found out in a situation you should have never be in if you really have the perfect life. XD No but seriously the thing is: stay true to yourself, people who love you will accept you and if they don't well it will be difficult but you still need to learn to accept who you are and the way you want live living for the sake of society and to uphold an image is no way to live really. 

Total score: 52.0
Average: 7.4 Star Rating 3.0

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bird Box

Image
Author: Josh Malerman Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Horror Original publication date: March 2014 Book description:  Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster? Thoughts: So this is a reread. The first time I read it was last year mainly because of booktube recommendations and the movie was released in N
Read more

Mid Month Wrap up (Hous Pocus + #AYearAThon)

For the beginning of the month, I participated in two Readathons. So I will do a wrap up of those two first ones that ended on the 13th. The first one was HOCUS POCUS READATHON. The goal was to cast a Spell to become immortal. Goal accomplished! It consisted of 7 challenges out of them, 6 were reading related. Read a total of 6 books. In those the total pages read were 2,263 In average it represented 377.67 pages per book  Not bad for the first two weeks of the month but yeah most of the book were on the shorter side. The second readathon accomplished was #AYearAThon in which we had to read a thriller. In a very good coincidence, these two overlapped allowing me to use a book from the previous challenges to cover this one as well. For this readathon only one book was finished, Misery and this one contained 370 pages.
Read more

The Diabolic

Image
Author: S.J. Kincaid  Series: The Diabolic #1 Genre: Sci-fi Original Publication Date: November 2016 Book Description (from GoodReads):  Nemesis is a Diabolic. Created to protect a galactic Senator's daughter, Sidonia. There's no one Nemesis wouldn't kill to keep her safe. But when the power-mad Emperor summons Sidonia to the galactic court as a hostage, there is only one way for Nemesis to protect Sidonia. She must become her. Now one of the galaxy's most dangerous weapons is masquerading in a world of corruption and Nemesis has to hide her true abilities or risk everything. As the Empire begins to fracture and rebellion looms closer, Nemesis learns that there is something stronger than her deadly force: the one thing she's been told she doesn't have - humanity. And, amidst all the danger, action and intrigue, her humanity might be the only thing that can save her, Sidonia and the entire Empire. Thoughts: This is a very interesting story the religion
Read more

Frankisstein: A love story

Image
Author: Jeanette Winterson  Genre: Sci-Fi, LGBT, Original publication date: May 2019 Book Description (from Goodreads):  In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love – against their better judgement – with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead… but waiting to return to life. But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. ‘Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.' What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and f
Read more