1st to Die

1st to Die Review

1st to Die launched James Patterson’s second major series, the Women’s Murder Club, and it demonstrated that his formula for success was not dependent on a male hero. Detective Lindsay Boxer is a San Francisco homicide detective with a complicated personal life and, as the novel opens, a newly diagnosed blood disease that may be fatal. She is investigating a series of murders targeting newlywed couples, and in the course of the investigation she assembles an unofficial working group: a journalist, an assistant DA, and a medical examiner — four women who become the Murder Club of the title.

The women’s friendship is the novel’s unexpected heart. Patterson, whose Alex Cross books are driven almost entirely by plot, allows genuine warmth and emotional texture into the Women’s Murder Club novels that the earlier series sometimes lacks. The four women are distinct, professionally compelling, and credibly talented, and their dynamic — the informal club, the shared meals, the combination of professional expertise — gives the thriller mechanics a humanizing context.

The crime itself — honeymoon couples murdered in the most intimate moments of their new marriages — is disturbing without being gratuitously so, and Patterson’s handling of the investigation is as technically efficient as anything in the Alex Cross books. The personal stakes are higher here, though: Lindsay is potentially dying while racing to catch a killer, and the combination of private mortality and public horror gives the narrative a pressure that the standard procedural rarely achieves. 1st to Die is the beginning of a series that, in its best volumes, matches anything in the Alex Cross canon.