Jordan Bravado’s #CBR4 Review #3: Toys by James Patterson
“Toys by James Patterson”
I was in a local bookstore looking specifically aat books for the Cannonball Read. I had a couple picked out, but when the store was closing I felt a kind of terror knowing I needed one more book. I asked my sister, who reads Janet Evanovich and the Jungle Run, for a suggestion.”Why don’t you try James Patterson?” she said.
I walked over to his own two shelves worth of available novels, and saw one that touted “JAMES BOND AND JASON BOURNE HAVE JUST BEEN TOPPED”. The cover was pretentious. It had giant words filling in the mystery and “TOYS” gracing almost half the front cover.
But I was told to never judge a book by it’s cover. So I picked it up. When I got around to read it, I realize I have great judgment. The book itself is flamboyant and flowery, every bit as pretentious as it’s cover.
It follows Hays Baker, a 007-type with the worst spy name possible. His wife, who plays the most cliche-driven, clueless woman who teeters on the edge of human emotion (and treated this way by Patterson and co-writer Neil McMahon), Lizbeth and their kids are all caught up in a murder conspiracy. Hays is a detective of sorts, looking into an unbelievable multi-homicide when he unfortunately becomes the man who’s hunted for it. We meet his forgettable family, including the heart of the book, his sister, Lucy. She’s the saving grace of it all, but it opens up the Hays Baker character to all kinds of scrutiny.
The book takes place 60 years in the future, where robots are available in Toy Stores, for both personal and professional use. They’ve been articulated to do anything you need or want them to do. Anything. Yes, even that to a degree. Of course, when they tell you this, they only go halfway there, because despite all the cursing and anti-American attitude, they’re decent people… right?
It moves at a quick pace, and it clocks in under 400 pages, so it’s not a slow read. It’s fine enough to lose yourself in some of the quasi-question-raising that the writers explore, but it won’t keep you asking anything for very long. You’ll meet familiar and colourful characters, but the impressions soon fade away as they give way back to the story of boring Hays Baker and his backseat driver, Lucy.
Hays is every bit a simple badass, with simple motives and a bad attitude… but he is no John McClane. He is no Jason Bourne or James Bond. For a book that suggests and berates lies being force-fed to you, it’s a little ironic that I feel the same about Toys, but that’s what I get for not judging this particular book by it’s cover.
Nick Stone – deniable operator for British Intelligence – has been assigned to carry out an officially-sanctioned assassination. When he realizes who the target is, he refuses. But he is then given a chilling ultimatum: fly to Central America and finish the job, or the eleven-year-old orphan in his care will get killed.
The US Navy’s latest and greatest nuclear submarine is out on its test voyage in the pacific ocean when the underwater terrain changes and the sea bed rises in places which are not on their charts. When the captain has a look out, he notices a mysterious fog patch in a place where, logically, there should not be one. The submarine changes course to investigate the mysterious bank of fog, but things start to go wrong. The sea bed rises faster than they expect and they find themselves stuck.
Having become the legal guardian of Kelly, the child of his best friend who was murdered for knowing too much, Nick stone finds himself in desperate need of money. Kelly is in therapy with post traumatic stress disorder after remembering in vivid detail the brutal manner in which her family has killed. In order to pay for her therapy, Nick accepts a freelance job which requires him to kidnap a Russian mafia warlord.
