Burn (Michael Bennett, Book 7)

A group practicing cannibalism, another doing high dollar jewelry heists is the basis for this book that leads Detective Bennett's investigation.He has returned from California only to be assigned to the ombudsman squad as punishment by a vindictive boss.This is a squad of misfits and officers not adjusted to dealing with the public, that is supposed to answer complaints from people.Detective Bennett begin prioritizing cases and provides leadership to the unlearned detectives and as the story continues it is these that solve both cases.Another great writing by the author who continues to write excellent novels.

"Burn", like all of the Michael Bennett novels, is a blend of chaotic New York police work undertaken by a wise-cracking detective; and a charming family life with his ten children, their Irish nanny and Bennett's Catholic priest grandfather.In this seventh book of the series, Bennett returns to New York only to learn that he has been banished to a Harlem precinct because of internal police politics. He's assigned to lead a new unit that is ineffective and in disarray.This changes when he is call back to his Major Crimes post to work on a series of jewelry robberies and finds that the cases are connected with grisly practices by some of the city's most wealthy citizens.But "Burn" is anticlimactic, leaving the reader wondering if the authors just ran out of story line. In short, it was good -- until the end.

I've always liked this character except this time. I felt he was a loose cannon in that he went after everyone half cocked. Patterson left a lot of unanswered questions in this one .D o we have to read the next book to see if Chats has her suicide overturned? What happens with the senator? There ate just too many unanswered questions.

I have loved every book with James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge but this one was like a fifth grader wrote it. It just rambled on and on and when it got to be where something could or should of developed they left the subject as it meant nothing to story. Characters where named but they never became any thing to do with the story or the plot. I'm sorry I wasted my time and money on this book

I am a Michael Bennett book FAN, but I wanted to "Burn" this book when I got to the end because there was NO end. It just stopped. It wasn't a cliffhanger, it just stopped like the writers' computer broke and they said, "oh well, we'll just send in the manuscript anyway"! Sheesh. I kept thinking I had missed some pages or something. The story was going along fine. I liked how the new gang was developing under Mike's leadership. James Patterson, your name is on this book. Don't let this happen again, please. A VERY VERY disappointed reader.

This book looked like the authors pulled topics in the following manner: one from Column A - two from Column B and three from Column Z. It appears that it was just thrown together - with the thought that it would sell, as long as James Patterson's name was on it.The characters were not developed at all. The introduction of cannibalism as a topic was disgusting, nauseating and irrelevant and did not enhance the story. It appeared that the authors simply grabbed this topic for the sake of novelty and threw it into to the mix of this garbage salad that it called BURN.We read this in our book club and the hostess who selected this book began the meeting with an apology for having selected this fiasco. Not one of our ten members disagreed with her....bummer!

I have read all of Patterson’s Michael Bennett books up through this book along with Patterson’s other series. I was stunned with the ending. I think 2-3 more chapters must have disappeared between the editors room and the printer. There are many dead end story lines. Chrissy’s outcome and how did mike circle back with the family? Will mike remain on the special task force or stay with his new outreach program. What happened to Starkie? What happened to Rylan and the other two partners in crime? Where are the diamonds? What happened to the other dinner guests including the senator? What happened to Roger? It makes me hesitant to read further books in this series. I love the characters in this series but this book was shockingly bad.

I'm a huge Patterson fan, love both his Alex Cross and Michael Bennett series. This book was enjoyable for the most part, but boy howdy did the ending flop! The book had several story lines going, and I fully expected some of them to turn out to be related and eventually woven together to give you that holy cow moment, but it never happened. The book was basically lacking in a conclusion or resolution. The story about one of his daughters was rather pointless and added nothing to the book. There were so many promising starts but no finishes. Like so many authors who have written a whole raft of books with the same main characters, especially those with co-writers, they just seem to run out of steam and should either step up the writing and ideas or end the series. This could and should have been a much more satisfying book.