On the night of December 8, 1980, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, left the recording studio in New York City after doing some work on one of Yoko's tracks, "Walking on Thin Ice." Dinner was suggested, but John decided to make a pit stop at the famous Dakota building where they lived so he could say good night to their young son, Sean. As they got out of their car, John was followed by a man named Mark David Chapman, who took a shooter’s stance and opened fire, hitting him in the back and shoulder with five rounds of bullets.

When the police arrived, they decided not to wait for an ambulance and threw a bloody John across the back seat of their squad car. They got him to the nearest hospital, but despite valiant efforts by the doctors and medical staff there, he was pronounced dead on arrival. Ironically, a producer for ABC Television was sitting in the very same ER waiting to be seen for a motorcycle accident he had earlier that day. When the police told him that John was DOA, he contacted the network. The shocking news was delivered by legendary sports announcer Howard Cosell, who interrupted a "Monday Night Football" game between the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins to tell the world of the tragic slaying.

Bestselling author James Patterson and journalists Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge recount not just the last days of John Lennon, but his entire life prior to his global success as a member of the Beatles. If John is the protagonist of this true-crime story, then the clear antagonist is the depraved psychopath Mark David Chapman, who traveled from Hawaii to New York, purchased a gun with hollow-point bullets, and completed his mission of ridding the world of John Lennon. He believed that John was a corrupt phony who needed to pay for, among other things, his remarks from the 1960s claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. As far as Chapman was concerned, that blasphemy would not stand.

"THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON will provide a welcome walk down memory lane coupled with tears of regret as we watch how someone so evil could deprive the world of someone who did, and would have continued to do, so much good."

John Lennon was not only my favorite Beatle, he was my idol since I was a lad. I thought I knew everything about him and his rise to fame from the streets of Liverpool, England. But THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON opened my eyes to many stories and tidbits that I was never aware of and is an engaging read from start to finish. The chapters about John's past are interspersed with those set in December 1980 from the point of view of Chapman and his well-crafted yet demented murder plan.

It was clear to me that the Chapman bits are pure James Patterson because they rang true with his ability to create fictional, evil characters and get inside their heads. The suspense grew with each passing chapter, even though I understood what the outcome would be. In Patterson's hands, Chapman glides through the streets of New York City and various hotels as if he is invisible. He gets inside this sick man's mind but still is unable to figure out why this had to happen.

On the flip side of Chapman's madness is some of the best researched details of John and his life that I have ever read. We are there when Beatles manager Brian Epstein tells the group that they will be bigger than Elvis because they write their own music. Ironically enough, they did end up meeting "the King" when they visited the States on one of their early tours. The difficult decision to replace original drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr was prompted by John, and it was not made easily. However, John fought for Ringo's inclusion even when the record company claimed he was too loud.

John was the first Beatle to get married; he and Cynthia had a son, John Charles Julian Lennon --- named after his own father, Cynthia's father, and his mother Julia, which I never knew. Another tidbit I loved involved my favorite rock band, The Rolling Stones, deciding that the only way they would make it big was if they stopped doing covers and write their own songs like the famed Lennon-McCartney team. One night, while watching a Stones show, John and Paul handed them a new song. An amazed Keith Richards went up to Mick Jagger and said, "Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and wrote it." The result was "I Wanna Be Your Man," which went as high as #13 for the Stones.

Almost equal to the Elvis meeting was Bob Dylan being the first person to introduce the Beatles to marijuana. We all know that this became a gateway drug for both psychedelic and hard drugs that would cloud their minds for years to come. It is well known that John was incredibly fond of his Aunt Mimi, who raised him from the age of five. He actually presented Mimi with the same royal medal that Queen Elizabeth had bestowed on him. The narrative shifts to Chapman and an incident where he ran into singer James Taylor coming out of a subway station. He went up to Taylor and told him he was working with John Lennon. Taylor recognized Chapman as being mentally ill and couldn't get away from him quickly enough.

The story spirals through John's well-documented divorce from Cynthia, the breakup of the Beatles, and his marriage to Yoko. While the other Beatles continued to make music on a regular basis, John occasionally released an album while seeing his real role as a celebrity figure responsible for being a public conscience to the masses and a proponent of peace; to that end, he became very spiritual. A seven-year-old Julian asked, "If you die, will I ever see you again?" John thoughtfully responded, "If I can communicate from the dead, I will float a white feather straight across the room to you." I would love to know if Julian ever saw that feather.

Tragedy and the end are inevitable in this tale. What made it so much worse was that John had just recorded his first album in seven years, Double Fantasy, and it was immensely successful. The first single, "(Just Like) Starting Over," was a #1 song, and the album was receiving amazing critical praise. Mark David Chapman prevented us from seeing John Lennon and Yoko Ono fully realize their own “starting over,” and that is perhaps the most unforgivable crime. Chapman famously offered the classic J.D. Salinger novel, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, as his full statement to the police, permanently tarnishing the name of that great work.

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON will provide a welcome walk down memory lane coupled with tears of regret as we watch how someone so evil could deprive the world of someone who did, and would have continued to do, so much good.