I know why James Patterson’s books have topped the list of “most often checked out from public libraries” for years. I check them out myself, and if I don’t happen to blow through them in a single sitting they languish away at the bedside until they’re due. Then I return them, then often check them out again a few weeks later.
You can devour a Patterson tome in a couple of hours, but putting them down is kind of like having to get up in the middle of an episode of some action-detective TV show. You kind of need to know what happens, but you’re not about to Tivo or bookmark the thing, or even remember the plot after a little while.
I read the first 30 or so chapters of both Cross Fire and Tick Tock on my Kindle for free, then checked them out of the library in tandem. Bad idea—the plots are pretty similar, and I couldn’t keep up with which deranged yet incredibly organized villain was blowing up which New York landmark, or which detective’s romantic involvement was an impending marriage and whose was a new relationship after the death of his wife.

This confusion ain’t ‘cause the books are heavy. It’s ‘cause they’re lite. If I want to get bogged down in technical plot details, I can read Star Wars novels. Patterson’s books are all about the slam-bang. What gets you to the explosions or the car crashes isn’t important. The showdowns are what’s important. Which is why I’ve now checked the latest Patterson, Toys, out of the library, and expect I’ll be checking it out a couple more times. It’s got a crappy sci-fi future-society gimmick at its core, but it really doesn’t matter if I buy into that (and I can’t, I just can’t) because lips will still get locked and guns will still get cocked at an alarming rate.