What I've Read: Eclipse

It was somewhere around 8 or 9 years ago that I randomly needed a book to read at an airport and picked up Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson. A legal drama about a TV news reporter that has been raped, it was a novel that I found gripping and written with a voice that I was taken to immediately. He made legal workings and courtroom dramas less sappy like Grisham does. Instead, he puts the focus on the characters and the current events that shape the story.

After reading Degree of Guilt, I was hooked. I instantly bought three more novels of his, and they just kept getting better and better. First off, his characters crossed over and shared stories in other novels, and they more complex than the crap you get from Patricia Cromwell or James Patterson. Over time, his new releases would take on more complex subjects, and I found them even more gripping and intelligent in their descriptions of varying viewpoints. All are courtroom/legal thrillers, but the thrust behind them was always unique: gun control, abortion, a woman as chief justice, political elections. Everything was poignant and timely and rational and thought-provoking and read like nonfiction. I loved it.

Eclipse is his latest, and it tells a fictional tale of an African national who returns from America to lead his people against an oil conglomerate and the country's ruthless autocrat. The story, while entirely fiction, feels so real and present that I could not help but feel it was, or could be, a prediction of possible events to come.

Wow, this is rather flowy and gushing in its praise. But that's what happens I guess when you find an author that gets its hooks into you. I like that he has an immediacy to his issues and presents conflicting and knowledgeable opinions. If you've got a hankering for a solid read, I definitely recommend his books. The wife doubted me at first, and now she's read almost all of them. How could you argue with that? This is a woman who likes crap TV on E! and Style. If I can get her hooked on this stuff, I think I am winning the battle slowly but surely.