KILL ME IF YOU CAN: REVIEW AND BONUS ENTRIES

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KILL ME IF YOU CAN

BY JAMES PATTERSON 

& MARSHALL KARP

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:

Matthew Bannon, a poor art student living in New York City, finds a duffel bag filled with diamonds during a chaotic attack at Grand Central Station. Plans for a worry-free life with his gorgeous girlfriend Katherine fill his thoughts--until he realizes that he is being hunted, and that whoever is after him won't stop until they have reclaimed the diamonds and exacted their revenge.

Trailing him is the Ghost, the world's greatest assassin, who has just pulled off his most high-profile hit: killing Walter Zelvas, a top member of the international Diamond Syndicate. There's only one small problem: the diamonds he was supposed to retrieve from Zelvas are missing. Now, the Ghost is on Bannon's trail--but so is a rival assassin who would like nothing more than to make the Ghost disappear forever.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

JAMES PATTERSON: In January, 2010, The New York Times Magazine featured James Patterson on its cover and hailed him as having "transformed book publishing." Time magazine named him "The Man Who Can't Miss," and he is a two-time Children's Choice Book Award "Author of the Year" nominee, a designation decided on by more than 15,000 children and teen readers.

In the past three years, James Patterson has sold more books than any other author (according to Bookscan), and in total, James's books have sold an estimated 220 million copies worldwide. Since 2006, one out of every seventeen hardcover fiction books sold was a Patterson title. He is the first author to have #1 new titles simultaneously on The New York Times adult and children's bestsellers lists and is the only author to have five new hardcover novels debut at #1 on the list in one year—a record-breaking feat he's accomplished every year since 2005. To date, James Patterson has had nineteen consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds the New York Times record for most Hardcover Fiction bestselling titles by a single author (63 total), which is also a Guinness World Record. 

MARSHAL KARP: It’s been a great life so far.

I’ve been a writer all my life. Commercials, TV sitcoms, a play, a movie, and nobody wanted to know much about me. Now I’m an author, and people are stalking me. Well, maybe not stalking, but they sure have a lot of questions. Here goes… 
IN THE BEGINNING… 
I was born in Manhattan, but grew up in a small factory town across the river in New Jersey. But New York was a magnet for me. Happily I had family to visit in Harlem, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and every year I’d spend the summer with my aunt and uncle in Queens. My movie, Just Looking, is loosely based on those summers. It’s about a 14-year-old boy, who is fascinated with sex, but it’s 1955, so what’s he supposed to do? Well, in the movie, he does what I did in real life.

In high school my favorite English teacher, Cornelius O’Connor, encouraged me to write. But I knew my parents would be happier if I got a real job, so I went to Rutgers University to study biology and become a dentist. Really, a dentist.

Fortunately, I flunked biology. But I did well in English composition, and I was writing for the school paper, so I muddled through as an English major, with no real plans for what to do after graduation.

Uncle Sam, however, had serious plans. Vietnam. I had 110 percent chance of getting drafted, but I didn’t want to go to war. It wasn’t a political statement. It’s this phobia I have about being in a jungle with people shooting at me. So I joined the National Guard. I spent six months in active duty, most of it in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I learned to build bridges, wrote letters to the girl back home, drove the 860 mile round trip to Chicago with my friend Barry Labovitz as many weekends as we could, and not much else. To read the rest of Marshall Karp's Bio, go to his website HERE.

MY REVIEW: 
KILL ME IF YOU CAN is James Patterson’s newest literary contribution, this time with co-author Marshall Karp. I must say that this pair has great chemistry working together and Patterson came up with one of his best stories of late. All of the traditional Patterson patterns were there with the interestingly well drawn out characters, short chapters that keep you turning the pages, and the good guy and bad guy teams.  Of course, there is also a marvelous love interest. However, what made KILL ME IF YOU CAN so good was that there are a couple of bombshells in this one. Things I never saw coming and having read ALL his books, I usually can get a feel for something if not see it right off the top, but not here. I literally gasped out loud a couple of times.

The basic story is about Matthew Bannon, an art student studying in New York, who is head over heels in love with his professor, Katherine Sanborne. Matthew had been a marine and served a tour in both Afghanistan and Iraq and is now back in the states doing what he feels is his true calling. Art! Matthew is the kind of character you like from the start and Patterson does a good job of creating Matthew in that way. His relationship with Katherine is lovely and romantic. The story starts off with a really big bang literally, right in Grand Central Station, and Matthew finds himself right in the middle of it. Before he knows it, he has in his possession a bag filled with loose and very valuable diamonds. What was he to do but take the bag and run to safety? This was going to change his life but he could never even suspect in what ways and neither does the reader!

Once the owner of the diamonds finds out who has them, the chase is on and paid assassins are sent to get the diamonds and take out Bannon. How Matthew deals with his new found wealth and new found danger are a thrill ride from start to finish and if you aren’t really surprised by a couple of twists in the story, I will say you missed something. This truly is one you won’t put down as you can be sure to expect the unexpected in KILL ME IF YOU CAN.

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BONUS ENTRIES

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