along came another patterson book ...

My cousin is on a James Patterson rampage, and has been dragging me along, mostly willingly. I have had so many things going on my life recently, that a lightning fast mystery read is about all that I can handle. in fact, I think it is proving a bit therapeutic.

I can't blame my multiple Pattersons completely on my cousin, however. His books are not just a quick read, but also mostly fun, whether written on his lonesome or with one of his many collaborators. I just finished two, The Beach House, from 2003, which he wrote with Peter de Jonge, and his first Alex Cross novel, Along Came a Spider, which he wrote in 1992. They are different in structure. The more recent collabo-Pattersons that I have read have a definite format: super-short, concise chapters, heavy on dialog, and usually with a page-turning thrill or cliffhanger. The Beach House follows this structure to the letter. While I didn't always buy the convoluted action, particularly at the end of the book, I have to admit that the characters were compelling. The most interesting of the lot was actually the victim, Peter Mullen, who was sadly quickly introduced and then as quickly dispatched in the first few pages of the book. His brother Jack Mullen spends the rest of the book trying to unravel his brother's life and death among the rich and kinky of Montauk. Peter's life sounded fairly interesting, if a bit sordid, but The Beach House never really gives its readers enough information to care about its primary victim.

I never saw the film adaptation of Along Came A Spider, but I couldn't help but picture a young Morgan Freeman in the role of Alex Cross, the tough-talking but tender-hearted D.C. detective and psychologist. The book, the first in his Alex Cross series,  is a high-speed chase for a serial killer. Serial killers have become almost passé in books and film, but I will say that Patterson's glimpses into the mind of his antagonist, Gary Soneji, are unsettling. And the fact that his preferred victims are children helps bring the creep meter up even more. It was interesting racing around '90s D.C. with Cross and his partner Sampson, too. Some things have changed, and many haven't. There's also a romance for Cross thrown in, with a Secret Service agent named Jezzie Flannagan. Some of those scenes were less convincing, espcially for this ex-D.C.-er - I don't care what time of night or day it is, being able to speed around the Beltway at 100mph, on a super-fast motorcycle or not, seems frankly out of the realm of possibility. That quibble aside, I enjoyed the read and will no doubt check out Alex Cross and Patterson in future.

After reading a few of these co-authored books I had to look up how he runs his writing factory. It's pretty interesting.

tiny beautiful shells ...

... keep washing up on the beach. Happily my eyesight is still sharp enough to find them.

beach still-life

throwback thursday: mom's pastels

So why do I take so many beach photos? Maybe because I remember spending evenings at the beach watching my mom draw with pastels ...

panoramas

I don't usually use the panorama feature on my phone, but I couldn't resist these views.

Larger view on flickr

Larger view on flickr

blue skies

Some more amazing early morning beach, sand, and sky shots.

more beach discoveries

You never know what a walk on the beach will bring. Interesting corals, seaweed, or just a moment of contemplation.

palm shadows

Backlit palm trees on the beach, with the moon peeking out from the clouds.

evening stroll

Last night the kid and the dog and I took a stroll on the beach just as the sun was fading and the moon was appearing. It's amazing how calming the ocean can be. We need to do this more often.

sunday at the beach

We stayed until the rain started ...

Examining an abandoned sand castle

Floating seaweed islands out in the ocean

No, we didn't make it, but isn't it cool?

palm beach pink

This is a real sunset from the other night.

happy birthday aunt paula

seagulls on the beach

happy birthday, mom

Born 80 years ago today ...

Glamorous Mom is on the left, with friends at the Jersey Shore

mom and dad at the beach

My dad was not known for going to the beach, except in the evening to do a little surf-casting. But there was apparently a time when he thought it would be the perfect place to take a certain young lady ...

lazy beach-y sunday

We have one of those "windows" of waiting for the cable company this afternoon, so we are taking it slow and easy. But that's what Sunday's are for, aren't they? We took a walk on the beach this morning to see if anything had changed. The beach is still mostly washed away, but now has a sand bar about twenty feet out. The kid splashed around and we still had fun, as there are finally shells again.

Our new beach (for now)

Admiring someone's ambitious sand architecture

These rocks used to be buried under the sand

halfway through june already?

How did that happen? Oh well. Today is the first day the kid got rained out of going to the pool in the afternoon, so we bought her a new swimsuit to sort of keep the summer mood going.

The sun will shine again

turtle nesting season

We are in the midst of turtle nesting season (March 31- October 31). I have yet to sight some actual turtles coming from the sea to lay eggs, but the evidence that they have been busy is all over the beach. The nests are dated and labeled, so that beach-goers will not trample or disturb the turtles-to-be.

I've tried to get to the beach early enough to spy a turtle, but so far no luck. I did get to see an early morning surfboard paddler.

There is also some lovely beach flora blooming near the turtle nests.

We are going to hopefully visit the nearby Loggerhead Marinelife Center and see some turtes close-up. In the meantime, there's always the turtle cam!

breakfast with a pelican

shell game

Even though I now live at the beach, or at least a stone's throw away, I still like to collect shells. There is something about finding a perfectly shaped, pristine shell, amid all of the worn, crunched, and battered fragments that is eminently satisfying. A real find is a shell with a hint of color — anything from purple to pink to deep orange to bright yellow also makes for a happy discovery.

Sometimes I wonder if all of our likes and predilections were imprinted on us during a tiny childhood window. I used to live near the beach when I was a kid too, at the Jersey Shore, a quite lovely, laid-back place, very different from any current cartoons of the same name on television. My family used to go to the beach nearly every night after dinner. My dad would surf cast, my brother and I would play in the sand, and my mom would draw us with her pastels.

We would only go to the beach, go swimming, when friends or relatives came to town in summertime. My mom didn't drive, and it was too far to walk. On one of those excursions I must have filled my pail full of shells. I remember I found a fragment, probably of a clam shell, that had hints of pink and was bordered in a deep purple. Such delicate color, as opposed to the usual gray-to-white clam shells or tons of mussel shells that littered the beach.

I treasured my find, like a talisman, and kept it for years. Now I have no idea what became of it. But maybe I scour the sands still, in search of that missing piece of my Jersey girl past. Or, more likely, I really just like surprises in nature, and the color purple.