By remarkable coincidence, THE 20th VICTIM is the 20th novel featuring the quartet that has come to be known as the Women’s Murder Club. At this point it would be easy for James Patterson and Maxine Paetro to perform the literary equivalent of phoning in these books. I am happy to report that they have done anything but. This latest installment contains a number of surprises and changeups in the manner of its 19 predecessors, and readers will be the richer for it.

THE 20th VICTIM starts strongly and never lets up. The initial case involves a traffic stop that goes very badly when the passenger in the stopped car shoots and kills the investigating police officer. The man flees, leaving behind the hapless driver, a patsy named Clay Warren, in a stolen vehicle loaded with drugs. Clay could help himself by identifying the shooter and thus aiding in his apprehension, but he is terrified of retaliation if he does. Yuki Castellano, a San Francisco assistant district attorney and a member of the Women’s Murder Club, is tasked with bringing Clay to trial but is aware that he was ultimately in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that justice would be better served if the doer was identified and apprehended.

"Patterson and Paetro continue to make a terrific collaborative team, and their names together on any book cover constitute a guarantee that what awaits within is worth buying and reading. This is especially true of THE 20th VICTIM."

Meanwhile, San Francisco homicide detective Lindsay Boxer is dealing with an extremely interesting series of murders. The first involves a retired sports figure who is killed execution-style at a fast food restaurant. The second concerns a prominent music producer and his wife who are taken out in their home by a sniper. It develops that the victims in both instances were dealing drugs. No one is more surprised than Lindsay and her law enforcement partner, Rich Conklin, when they learn that other high-profile drug dealers were killed at the same time in different parts of the United States. As the murders continue, they discover an organized group that seems to be dedicated to vigilante action against the drug dealers, as well as an ex-special ops team member who appears to be responsible for the killings in the Bay area. Finding him, though, is another problem, fraught with danger as it dovetails indirectly with another plotline in the book.

However, the most intriguing case involves Lindsay’s husband, Joe Molinari. Joe is contacted by an old friend who strongly believes that his father, an elderly man with health problems, was murdered by his physician while receiving inpatient hospital treatment. There is no real evidence of this, but Joe’s friend is certain that it occurred and is bound and determined to obtain justice and/or revenge, in no particular order. It is revealed that the doctor has lost other patients as well, but Joe has reason to suspect that his friend might be guilty of the very crime of which he is accusing the physician. It’s a simple issue with a complex set of facts, well presented, and a bit of an unexpected spinoff that makes the book worth reading all by itself.

The Women’s Murder Club is one of those rare long-running series that improbably gets better with age. Patterson and Paetro continue to make a terrific collaborative team, and their names together on any book cover constitute a guarantee that what awaits within is worth buying and reading. This is especially true of THE 20th VICTIM.