Beach Road

Here's a book you may want to take to the beach this summer. Former basketball star turned lawyer Tom Dunleavy is asked to represent a teenaged athlete accused of murdering four young men. With his former lover, also a lawyer, Dunleavy sets out to present a formidable defense. You'll never guess whodunit because the answer lacks credibility. Nonetheless, the cast is so uniformly proficient that the story moves along in spite of the inept plot. Of singular note is Billy Baldwin's characterization of Dunleavy. One wonders why Richard Ferrone's talents and unique voice are wasted on announcing the chapters and characters. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 27, 2006
Bestseller Patterson shows signs of having gone to the well too often in this slapdash collaboration with de Jonge, his coauthor on The Beach House
(2002). Tom Dunleavy, a former professional basketball player and local East Hampton legend, is getting by as an underworked and unmotivated attorney. His sports glory days and his one true love are long in the past, but he gets second chances at personal and professional redemption when three locals are gunned down, apparently in the aftermath of racial tensions arising from a heated pickup game of hoops. The police seize on Dante Halleyville, the country's best high school star, as their suspect, and Dunleavy must dust off his old courtroom skills and enlist his lost love, Kate Costello, as his partner. Patterson readers know to expect a surprise ending, but he leaves too few possibilities for many to be genuinely fooled. Fans can only hope that Patterson soon returns to the level he achieved with his Alex Cross series.

May 1, 2006
The gripping " Beach Road" returns to the world of the Hamptons, where Patterson set " The Beach House" (2002). Tom Dunleavy is a small-time lawyer who lands a big case when three young men he plays basketball with are found shot to death execution-style at a billionaire's basketball court. The evidence points to a rising high-school basketball star, Dante Halleyville, who scuffled with one of the other young men earlier on the day of the murder and who apparently was seen disposing of the gun used to commit the murders. Tom reluctantly takes the case, convincing his ex-girlfriend, Kate Costello, a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan, to help him prove Dante innocent. The novel races toward a conclusion so shocking that even longtime Patterson devotees won't see it coming. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)