I generally love books of this genre, particularly those that get inside the killer’s head, so I was really looking forward to reading this. Unfortunately, I wrote a better thriller when I was twelve.

The style of writing here is unbelievably childlike. I’ve never seen such an abuse of italics and exclamation points, and the stupidity of the characters is so extreme that suspension of disbelief becomes impossible.

The hero and heroine of the story, as well as their supporting cast, are blundering buffoons who display nothing but incompetence every step of the way. The main madman is a one-dimensional stereotype with absolutely nothing to make him interesting. Patterson writes him to be “super clever,” giving him a style of speech and narration that’s not at all realistic. It’s like the character was yanked out of an old 1800s novel; the way he speaks comes off as a failed attempt to make him sound highly intelligent and ends up sounding fake and silly. The story itself drags on with too many side plots and more holes than the Titanic, to the point where you’re absolutely rooting for everyone involved to die horribly.

Additionally, I have no problem with scenes of sexual violence, and Lisa Gardner’s Say Goodbye is a beautiful example of how to write disturbing scenes that don’t feel gratuitous and are actually true to life as well as integral to the plot. In contrast, the violence in Kiss the Girls is entirely gratuitous, written in a way that makes me think Patterson was simply drawing from online fantasy forums.

Do yourself a favor: if you want exciting, captivating, disturbing books about serial killers, stick with authors like Lisa Gardner and Tess Gerritsen, who have large collections of well-written genre novels, and skip this ludicrous attempt at a thriller. Hell, go watch the movie. It’s not great but it’s leaps and bounds more enjoyable than this literary disaster, and at least it has Morgan Freeman.