What I've Read (sorta): The Devil's Light

Once the Summer of Klosterman ended, I had a chance to catch up on one of the few fiction writers I read regularly. I've written about Richard North Patterson books before (trust me, you can find the reviews on the blog). I had gotten it originally as an audiobook to listen to on the drive to a from New Jersey for my aunt's wedding, but it was way longer than I thought it would be so I held off. Was going to listen to it when I took my long flight to Hawaii next month, but figured why not just get it over with now.

This book didn't do it for me at all. It's premise is pretty simple: Osama bin Laden devises a plan to steal a nuclear weapon and detonate it above Tel Aviv. Spies from the CIA and Mossad try to thwart said plan. Sounds interesting, but it just wasn't, and for a number of reasons. Part is bad luck for Patterson; bin Laden is dead, and that reality just sucks the wind from the book. The plot is still fascinating and eerily plausible it seems (the bomb is stolen from Pakistan, which has the stability and security of a wet paper towel).

Besides the whole bin Laden thing, the book also reads almost exactly like a book I listened to when we drove back to Kentucky for the holidays last year. So reading the same kind of stuff twice in 8 months is a little bland for me. Further, this is a far departure from the novels Patterson got me hooked on in the first place. I got sucked in by all his in-depth courtroom thrillers centered on political topics. Now his recent books have been more military-themed novels that I feel are already done ad nauseum. Everyone seems to had written the "bin Laden nuclear bomb" plot so I just feel bummed that he's treading into well-worn territory and not taking a unique viewpoint.

So I hope he goes back to what I liked about his first 10 or so novels because I'd hate to dismiss him from my reading list. One book doesn't ruin it for me, but I'm actually going to pay more attention this time to the plot instead of just buying it without even needing to read previews.