Short & Sweet Review: Blindside by James Patterson

Title: Blindside

Author: James Patterson

Series: Michael Bennett, #12

Published: February 2020, Little, Brown & Company

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages

Source: Personal copy

Summary:

The mayor of New
York has a daughter who’s missing and in danger. Detective Michael
Bennett has a son who’s in prison. The two strike a deal.

Bennett
and the mayor have always had a tense relationship, but now the mayor
sees in Bennett a discreet investigator with family worries of his own.

Just one father helping another.

The
detective leaps into the case and sources lead him to a homicide in the
Bronx. The victim has ties to a sophisticated hacking operation—and
also to the mayor’s missing daughter, Natalie, a twenty-one-year-old
computer prodigy. The murder is part of a serial killing spree, one with
national security implications. And suddenly Bennett is at the center
of a dangerous triangle anchored by NYPD, FBI, and a transnational
criminal organization.

Michael Bennett has always been an
honorable man, but sometimes—when the lives of innocents are at
stake—honor has to take a back seat. Survival comes first.

***Short & Sweet Reviews are
short, quick reviews. These will mainly be used for series books where I
have already done full reviews on some of the earlier books or for
books that I feel will suffice with a quick review. These will not be
used for review requests or blog tours.

My thoughts: The Michael Bennett series continues to be one of my favorite James Patterson series…one that I enjoy not only because it is set in NYC but because of how important family is to Detective Michael Bennett. I love seeing him balance his job as a NYC detective with being the father to ten children.

In this latest installment, we see that love of family come to play when the mayor comes to him with a favor – help the mayor find his daughter and he will help him with his son who is still in prison. If Michael is successful, will the mayor really come through or is he the type to just say anything to get you to do what he wants?

This book takes Michael all the way to Estonia and is fast-paced and full of action. It keeps you on your toes and the ending is full of surprises. There were resolutions to most of the threads running through the book yet some were left open so that it would not surprise me if we see certain characters again in the future.

I do enjoy this series and will be curious to see what comes next. I’m not sure how many more books there will be – some of James Patterson’s series have gone on much longer and some have already exceeded their limited so who knows. But I hope we have a few more books to go in this one!

Books in this series:

1. Step on a Crack

2. Run For Your Life

3. Worst Case

4. Tick Tock

5. I, Michael Bennett

6. Gone

7. Burn

8. Alert

9. Bullseye

9.5 Chase (BookShots)

10. Haunted