James Patterson’s “Tick Tock” starts off with a boom. Literally, a bomb has been planted in the New York City public library. The bomb has enough explosives to kill at least two dozen people as soon as the first unfortunate person opens the laptop it’s hidden in. However, the people in the library get lucky– this is a fake bomb, but the message flashing across the screen promises the next one won’t be.
Detective Mike Bennett gets put on the case, an Irish American with an extremely unique family (ten kids, two Black, two Hispanic, one Asian and the rest Caucasian, and all of them are adopted).
Detective Bennett gets pulled from his family vacation to pursue the killer, a man who is copying the crimes of all the great NYC serial killers. Detective Bennett is working non-stop trying to predict the kill as he works down his list of people he intends to kill. It’s a race against time to save lives and if he fails he has more at stake than the lives of strangers because little does he know his name is the last one on that list.
Patterson has an amazing writing style. He hooks readers from the very first sentence and keeps them drooling for more until the last. This urgency for more keeps the audience on their toes, making this page-turner a good one.
His sensory details make it hard to decipher the book from the images the readers see in their heads. However, if the reader is not good with violence, this is not a good book because his imagery makes it very easy for the reader to imagine the scenes.
Patterson’s one downfall would be that it is a little drawn-out. He seems to be trying to fill more and more space and drawing out the dramatic ending. However, Patterson saves himself from the losing the reader as he gets in enough details that the reader holds on to see the ending.
Another great part of this is that Patterson leaves the ending as the classic cliffhanger, enough to close this story, but he also leaves enough open for the next book in the series.
Jacqueline Valentino is a fourth-year student majoring in English with a minor in journalism. She can be reached at JV671648@wcupa.edu.