Private Games by James Patterson

Private Games by James Patterson


Look at him on his knees, with his back to me and my knife at his throat.

Why, he trembles and shakes as if a stone had just clipped his head. Can you smell it? Fear? It surrounds him with an odor as rank as the air after a bomb explodes.

"Why?" he gasps.

"You've angered me, monster," I snarl at him, feeling a deeper-than-primal rage split my mind and seethe through every cell. "You've helped ruin the games, made them a mockery and an abomination."

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My Views:

Sir Denton Marshall is a member of the London Organizing Committee. He is brutally murdered a few days before the London Olympics. His decapitated head is placed on a previously headless statue of an ancient Greek senator. Peter Knight is called immediately to the place of crime. He is an investigator at the London office of Private International and his company provides security for the LOC. His mother was engaged to Marshall.

A serial killer who calls himself Cronus, named after the Greek God of Time and the son of the ancient rulers of Earth and Sky is the killer. He wants to clean up the modern Olympics. Cronus has a past and he with the help of three Serbian sisters (named Furies by him) are ahead of all the investigative agencies to kill people at their will. Cronus letters to a reporter named Karen Pope telling her of his plans in advance.

Scotland Yard Inspector Elaine Pottersfield (Knight's sister-in-law) along with Knight, have to find Cronus in time to avert more death and destruction at the Games.

Patterson has kept the chapters short and very readable. I liked the pace and the story line. The character development is also good. I do recommend it for fast paced Crime Fiction lovers.