The 9th Judgment By James Patterson and Maxine Paetro Read by Carolyn McCormick Hachette Audio, (2010) An Unabridged Recording ISBN: 978-1607881797 Genre: Mystery

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - February 2, 2011

The Alex Cross series that Patterson writes himself are the best, most suspenseful, and heartwarming mysteries, but the women's murder club books comes in second. This is a group of novels in which four women enjoy each other's company and respect each other's ideas, a police sergeant, an assistant DA, a newspaper reporter, and a coroner. They all end up involved in solving the crimes presented in these mysteries. This book is as good as the others.

There are two principle plots with, of course, several subplots. A male kills a young woman and her one year old child. He leaves a message, written in red lipstick, WCF, which is later found out to mean women and children first. The four members of the women's murder club are outraged by the horrendous deed of a killing of a young innocent mother and a defenseless child. Is this the first of a series of future crimes? Is this why the murderer says "first"? Will he move on from such a murder to an even more grizzly crime next?

Anther murder occurs about the same time and is also faced by the group. A cat burglar, who is a school teacher and who is abused by her husband, enters the second floors of the homes of wealthy people while they are eating and steals their jewels. One night, the husband and wife come upstairs during the robbery. She hides until they are asleep, but when she tries to slip out, she knocks over a table and awakens the couple. She gets away, but the husband uses the opportunity to shoot and kill his wife and blame it on the cat burglar. Will he be found out? Will the school teacher be discovered to be the burglar? Will she finally be able to have a happy marriage?

• The 8th Confession, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
  The 8th Confession takes the four women that we have come to love into three separate cases. Each case has at least one murder, one many killings. Two of our friends fall in love. Both the murders and the loves are far from simple affairs and are suffused with problems.
  
  
• The Postcard Killers, by James Patterson and Liza Marklund.
  NYPD detective Jack Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren't what draw him - he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each restaurant through a killer's eyes.