Private Berlin (Private, 5)

Private Berlin is the 5th book in the Private series by American author James Patterson. It is co-written with Mark Sullivan. Set in modern-day Berlin, where Jack Morgan’s Private organisation has yet another branch, and starts with the search for a Private investigator, Christoph Schneider, who has failed to check in as expected. His ex-fiancée, Private operative Mattie Engel alerts the Private team who contact Jack Morgan to authorise the activation of Schneider’s locator chip, and the team also examines the cases Chris has been working on. The chip Chris had inserted leads the team to an abandoned slaughterhouse; when Kripo are called, Hauptcommissar Hans Dietrich is reluctant to allow Private any input. But soon enough, the remains of many victims are uncovered, moments before the slaughterhouse is destroyed by explosives. As Private and Kripo investigate, they try to tie Chris’s murder to his current cases: a rising soccer star with occasional erratic performance; and a billionaire businessman whose wife suspects him of adultery. But is seems Private’s computers have been hacked and Chris’s files corrupted; security footage shows him meeting with an unknown woman; and a meeting with a cabaret owner raises more questions. This fast-paced action novel features car chases, explosions, a high-class brothel, masks and disguises, torture and kidnapping. The reader is kept guessing to the end. As usual, it is all presented in Patterson’s gimmicky short chapters: anything from one to four pages of print, this also means a quick read as 429 pages is effectively only 300 or less. The other gimmick is the use of first-person narration for the villain: meant to be unnerving, but doesn’t really have that effect. The co-writer for this book is the same as Private Games, but this definitely a better book: perhaps Patterson himself had more input, or perhaps it is that only readers familiar with Berlin would be able to assess if the feel of the city is genuinely conveyed. The climax is a bit clunky, and the only character with any depth is Mattie. Will the Private series continue, and will it be worth reading? Another quick read.