James Patterson’s “ZOO”

When I saw this book on the shelf in my local grocery store, I thought to myself “Ya’ know, you haven’t paid a lot of attention to “popular” writers lately, so maybe you should get off your high horse and check it out”.  Well, that’s not exactly how my thought process went, but it’s pretty close.  Ergo, I went home, went on-line and looked the book up.

When I logged in, I discovered that it was an audio book, and that they have become somewhat less expensive these days; I was used to purchasing the CD’s for a fortune.  So I said “What the heck!” — it’s James Patterson and a book that seems interesting as the tag line on the inside of the book in the store was:  “This time, it’s not zombies.” I admit: on that, they had me.

Now on to the review.  In an effort to keep this short, sweet and to the point this book depressed the hell out of me.  To be sure, there was a lot of science (none of which I have even attempted to verify) and great story telling.  The problem with this book is simply that there was a lot (and I do mean a lot) of MAN HAS DONE SOMETHING TO KILL THE WORLD!!! in it.  There are also a few shots taken at Fox News Channel which I found totally perplexing — at one point the narrator/protagonist says about a female Fox News Anchor — “The blond bimbo said…”.  I mean REALLY?  As a female and a thinker, it takes quite a bit to offend me, but this was just over the top (and I’m a red-head!).

To be fair, if the character in the story had a background that called for such views, I would have accepted them in stride and perhaps even applauded them for building the character and the readers view of him/her.  Unfortunately for this book, no such background existed, unless we are to infer that because the protagonist owned a chimpanzee, he loves animals and everyone at Fox (or who watches that channel or might be a blond bimbo) does not.  Jeez.

Fox News and blond bimbos aside, the main reason I did not enjoy this book is because of the obvious pulling of heart-strings (which in some books is an excellent idea) and complete and total let down at the end.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have read, listened to and enjoyed many works that do not have a happy ending.  However, this is the first, especially by an Author I really used to enjoy, using such low-down tactics to push his own view-point onto his readers in such a way — and then have the nerve to charge them for it.  At least Stephen King, like it or not, was honest and forthright when he wrote and published “Guns”.

UPDATE: By the way, the “hero” of this story left his chimpanzee when he went to go off to do this own thing.  This is a poor chimpanzee who loved and depended on his owner (who the chimp looked at as a father/protector) was left in the dirt by our supposed “hero”.   Just FYI.