2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club)

In 2nd Chance, a young girl is shot down on the steps of a San Francisco church, and Detective Lindsay Boxer decides that the time is right to reconvene the Women's Murder Club, the loosely-knit group that cracked a baffling mystery in James Patterson's earlier 1st to Die. Collaborating with assistant DA Jill Bernhardt, reporter Cindy Thomas and coroner Claire Washburn, Boxer is soon on the trail of a canny murderer who has the knack of making his trackers into his quarry. Boxer and the Women's Murder Club begin to believe that the killer might have been on the force, but his ultimate aims are unguessable--and the revelations in store shock them all.

Patterson is the maestro behind such winners as Cat and Mouse and Roses are Red, but his Alex Cross books are familiar territory for readers. His new team, however, are individually characterised with great skill, and though the short time we spend with each of them forces concision on the author--and his mysterious co-writer Andrew Gross's--part, the customary skills are all brought into play in this diverting mystery. It's always a gamble for an author who has established a highly successful series with one much-loved protagonist to inaugurate a new one with fresh characters but The Women's Murder Club has all kinds of possibilities and chances are will prove a formidable force. --Barry Forshaw