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Dark Lady
Dark Lady
Author: Richard North Patterson
In Dark Lady, Richard North Patterson displays the mastery of setting, psychology, and story that makes him unique among writers of suspense, and one of today's most original and enthralling novelists. — In Steelton, a struggling Midwestern city on the cusp of an economic turnaround, two prominent men are found dead within days of each other. One...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780679450436
ISBN-10: 0679450432
Publication Date: 8/31/1999
Pages: 384
Rating:
  • Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
 35

3.2 stars, based on 35 ratings
Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Dark Lady on + 7 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Very exciting book -- lots of twists and turns -- thriller to the end.
reviewed Dark Lady on + 29 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
excellect political tale that leaves you questions to ponder.
reviewed Dark Lady on + 65 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
A good read
SanJoseCa avatar reviewed Dark Lady on + 328 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
This crime story is set in a fictional Midwestern town on the shores of Lakr Erie. The construction of a baseball stadium threatens to be the towns downfall. A very gruesome murder occurs and the scenes are very graphic and realistic. This thriller has greed, corruption and a lot of double-dealing along with back-stabbing. If you are not easily offended by violence and sex.....you will find the spell binding drama very intertaining!
reviewed Dark Lady on + 69 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Patterson's Dark Lady spins a web that keeps you guessing what next. Very well written
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reviewed Dark Lady on + 3 more book reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Patterson's signature style of crime suspense depends heavily on the terse descriptive passages he uses to render settings and characters. This makes his work adapt especially well to audio, since the listener is constantly being told exactly what's going onAin adjective-laden language that has modern-day colorings of film noir and Raymond Chandler. (Accordingly, all eight of Patterson's previous novels are also available from Random House AudioBooks). Stella Marz is a politically ambitious Assistant County Prosecutor in Steelton, an American rust-belt city plagued by unemployment, racial division and rampant local corruption. Young, beautiful and forthright, Stella has earned the nickname "Dark Lady" as a ruthless law-woman. But she meets her match when she's assigned to investigate the grisly murder of her own ex-lover, an attorney for the town's drug dealers. Along the way, plenty of sordid sexual and violent acts are detailed, making for a sustained mood of grimy titillation. Kalember's (of TV's Sisters and thirtysomething) reading is crisply enunciated and tactfully understated.
reviewed Dark Lady on + 204 more book reviews
This is one of those books that I laid down several times and had to just keep plugging away at it to finish it. I found myself not really understanding the plot...maybe because the book moved so slow or I had difficulty connecting the different characters.
Grammy2shoes avatar reviewed Dark Lady on
I enjoy a good book like most folks. What I don't enjoy is being made to feel illiterate, undereducated and generally stupid when I invest my time in leisurely reading. If those things do not bother you or you are just curious then go ahead and read Dark Lady. It will reference words few folks use in real sentences and plays and historical literature that ivy league school professors toss around to make themselves feel more important.

Early on the average reader can deduce the guilty. The fascinating part of the story is the intricate weaving the author uses to pull together all of his characters. However, the author tried so hard to make his story seedy and gritty that even for the time period in which the story was set the racial stereotypes are completely over the top. To cover for this the author even had the web of racism be central to each of the characters inner demons. But what did not work to me is that the stereotypes were so cliche' that maybe it exposes something about the writers perception of what racism is to himself.

I'm sad to say that each of the surprise and shocking moments read like something that has been written about time and again. Maybe someone can invent some newer and more lewd sex activities to make us shocked again. Maybe it is true that between just plain living, TV and Movies there are too few surprises that are left to be written about when it comes to trying to describe depraved individuals.

Otherwise the story is ok if you want to feel like a dark cloud is lingering nearby and following you along everyday and you care about a heroine that has the personality of a sock in a rock.


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