Some tropes deserve retirement, like giving birth in a storm. Please let it rest.
I picked up 12th of Never because it was the next in the series and, honestly, I just enjoy reading Lindsay Boxer do her thing. But this time around, the thrill was… muted. Instead of diving into a juicy case, we opened with a triple-punch of familiar tropes: Lindsay gives birth at home in a storm (of course she does), the baby immediately gets sick (of course she does), and chaos descends upon brand-new motherhood (of course it does). Cue my eye roll so hard it nearly sprained my optic nerve.
And if that wasn’t enough predictable drama, Rich and Cindy are still working through the issues they started in 11th Hour. Spoiler: they’re not really “working through” anything. Cindy keeps putting her job first, Rich wants commitment, and I’m in the background asking, “Then why are you two still together?” Honestly, this relationship should’ve been wrapped up somewhere between books 11 and 12 so we didn’t have to sit through its inevitable decline.
But the cases themselves actually delivered.
Claire’s subplot had, and held, my attention. A dead body vanishes from her morgue. Not undead or mostly dead or kind of dead. Dead-dead. Since bodies rarely stroll out for fresh air unassisted, the whole situation had “inside job” written all over it. And because we know Claire treats her work like sacred ground, the culprit had to be someone with access. The creep factor was delightfully macabre.
Then we’ve got the professor with the visions. Crazy has nothing on him. His plotline was fine, but the disappearing corpse was what kept me flipping pages at Patterson-speed.
If I were in charge of editing, I’d toss the entire new-mom chaos arc, the storm birth, the immediate baby illness, and the Rich/Cindy relationship woes. None of those added tension; they just padded the story with predictable beats we’ve all seen before.
Still, I stuck with the book for one reason: It’s Patterson, and there’s going to be a 13. And you know I’ll be there, popcorn in hand, hoping the next one leaves the worn-out tropes at the door.
