Title: Escape
Author: James Patterson & David Ellis
Series: Billy Harney #3
Release Date: June 20, 2022
Length: 448 pages
Genre: Mystery/ Thriller
***My Review***
Detective Billy Harney and his colleague are pursuing a would-be abduction of a teenage girl through the streets of Chicago. “Escape” begins with Harney and his partner tailing a prospective kidnapper of a teenage girl and concludes with a sad event that surprised me.
Two investigations are underway against him, the first of which aims to bring down Jericho Hooper, the head of Chicago’s biggest and most influential street gang. Hooper plays so deftly that he has never been discovered.
Through his nightclubs, strip clubs, and laundries, he also launders millions of dollars annually. Mason Tracy, a 20-year-old man who is brilliant at concealing his dubious enterprises and maintaining financial records where everything looks to be in order, is a member of Hooper’s squad.
The second inquiry involves a young woman who asks Harney for assistance because she believes her mother is in danger as a result of the shocking information she has learned about her husband. She left and divorced him as a result of what her mother learned. Due to the knowledge she gained, the daughter did, however, overhear her father attempting to murder her mother.
Will the detective be able to find the truth with so few hints? What is being kept a secret here?
Escape is the third installment in Patterson and Ellis’ Billy Harney series. He is a Chicago detective who works in an elite team that concentrates solely on “heater” cases, the high-profile crimes that dominate nightly newscasts. This narrative mentions events from The Black Book and The Red Book. Especially with Billy Harney’s personal life. How he has had to deal with the deaths of his wife and partner, as well as the imprisonment of his father, a Chicago police officer.
Despite being the third book in the Billy Harney series, this one may be read independently. Although this book has aspects from the previous ones, you won’t have any trouble with that because it stands alone as a tale.
Escape by James Patterson & David Ellis will demand greater focus and attention since there is no pausing of the events, they unfold simultaneously, and many people are occurring after various stories. You must thus be mentally present at all times.
Furthermore, Escape dealt with a variety of topics. Several plotlines ran concurrently until most of them came together in surprising and intriguing ways, even if some circumstances were complicated and not at all realistic. One important guideline for reading Patterson is that to appreciate the journey, you must suspend your sense of reality and disbelief.
One of my observations is that I sometimes felt overwhelmed by everything going on, and I needed some space to consider who is related to whom, how, and in what direction the events are going.
With all the many plots and individuals coming in and out, a lot was going on. In some aspects, the telling of the narrative was harmed by having too many acts and factors. Some several events and consequences didn’t make sense to me and damaged the storyline, even though the tension and puzzles weren’t bad. I would list a few, but I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot.
I liked Billy Harney as the main character, his side-splitting humor on the bar stage, and his fantasy of a future relationship. He still sticks to that tried-and-true formula that most Patterson main heroes do. Readers frequently see characters in Patterson’s books being nearly physically beaten to a halt while chasing bad men and narrowly escaping death multiple times. Being the detective lead in a Patterson series comes at a price.
To me, Escape by James Patterson & David Ellis was simply ordinary and nothing exceptional. Nothing that greatly troubled me nor anything that particularly pleased me. It was quite similar to numerous thrillers I’ve read previously in terms of kidnapping, financial crime, retribution, and blackmail, so I gave it an average grade.
If you want a fast-paced, easy-to-read novel with plenty of twists and turns to keep you intrigued Escape by James Patterson & David Ellis is a good option. The incredibly short chapters, the way all the moving parts came together gradually, and the charming hero of the narrative are more than enough to keep you reading to the conclusion.