Books

The Drowning People
"The Big Sleep (Penguin Modern Classics)
The Lady in the Lake: And Other Novels (Penguin Modern Classics)
Inspector Cadaver (Penguin Modern Classics)
Lock 14 (Penguin Modern Classics)
The Yellow Dog (Penguin Modern Classics)
The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories
The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)
Ice Blues (A Donald Strachey Mystery)
The Big Dig (Carlotta Carlyle Mystery S.)
A Maze of Murders
Calypso
Canto for a Gypsy
Gypsy in Amber
Banker
The Danger
Flood
Red Crystal
The Wench Is Dead
A Perfect Match
C Is for Corpse
The Set-up
The Way Through the Woods
Murder...Now and Then
Shotgun

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BY James Patterson & Peter De Jonge?
Hard to believe its a Patterson book!
Book on CD
Audio CD Review; Always Good
interesting style of patterson's...

The Beach House
James Patterson , and Peter De Jonge
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Beach Road
Lifeguard
Honeymoon
The Lake House
Cradle and All

ASIN: 0316969680
Release Date: 2002-06-10

Amazon.com

James Patterson and Peter de Jonge's The Beach House opens with the death of a handsome townie on Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, where being a single-digit millionaire is laughable and being poor is unthinkable. Peter Mullen is a high school dropout who parks cars at the private bashes of the superwealthy Barry and Campion Neubauer. When Peter is found dead on the beach, the Neubauers and their friends insist that he drowned, but his brother Jack, a law student who saw Peter's body, knows he was beaten to death. As Jack uncovers evidence of his brother's secret life, he begins to realize that the very rich are indeed different from the rest of us. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Jack's patiently plotted payback for Peter's death is one that the Hamptons will not soon forget.

There are no big surprises in The Beach House, but it's vintage Patterson, with plenty of action, villains with hearts blacker than obsidian, and a working-class hero who pulls himself up by the bootstraps. Patterson and de Jonge previously coauthored the inspirational golf romance Miracle on the 17th Green, but this new game of money, mayhem, and murder clearly suits them to a tee. --Barrie Trinkle

Book Description

Jack Mullen is in law school in New York City when the shocking news comes that his brother Peter has drowned in the ocean off East Hampton. Jack knows his brother and knows this couldnt be an accident. Someone must have wanted his brother dead. But the powers that be say otherwise. As Jack tries to uncover details of his brothers last night, he confronts a barricade of lawyers, police, and paid protectors who separate the multibillionaire summer residents from local workers like Peter. And he learns that his brother wasnt just parking cars at the summer parties of the rich. He was making serious money satisfying the sexual needs of the richest women and men in town. THE BEACH HOUSE reveals the secret lives of celebrities in a breathtaking drama of revengewith a finale so shocking it could only have come from the mind of James Patterson.

Customer Reviews:

BY James Patterson & Peter De Jonge?.......2007-06-14

I think Patterson could have done without the help. I like Patterson's style and move-along plots. This plot however, with the autopsy on Peter's body getting passed off as a drowning-suicide, was a disappointment. The rich buy the courts, but not with the kinds of evidence the coroner presented. The ending really frosts the cake when they have their "Kangaroo Court" in the abandoned Beach house over a two-day span. Since it wasn't terrible, I can only give three stars.

J. P. Landry, author of Hazard 666

Hard to believe its a Patterson book!.......2007-06-10

What a waste of time spending that much time, then to have an ending that doesn't make sense at all!! Feel that I wasted my time and money on this one. After recently readingJudge and Jury , hard to believe its written by same person. If you want a good one, pick up Judge & Jury.

Book on CD.......2007-05-23

I listened to Beach Road on CD and I must say that I did enjoy the book. I thought that it was interesting the way the story played out. Honestly I was surprised by the charater Loco turned out to be. I enjoyed this book.

Audio CD Review; Always Good.......2007-05-16

I've listened to quite a few of Patterson's books on Audio, and I enjoy the little background scenarios that are sometimes created with music, or various sound effects; the stories are solid and I feel something is lost by dissecting them or their characters. We enjoy and return to Patterson's books because we know they are reliable and we won't be let down. That said, I have one issue which relates ONLY to the audio versions and not the books themselves: PLEASE make sure your pronunciations of unusual-sounding names or places is correct! The Long Island town of Ronkonkoma, for example; to see it in print is no problem, but to hear it repeatedly mispronounced made me crazy and truly detracted from the moment. (The accent belongs on the 2nd syllable, not the 3rd...)

interesting style of patterson's..........2007-04-03

This is my first book that I've read of Patterson's. I saw his list of books and found it interesting that he co-writes with other authors. However, it doesn't seem to be a bad idea. With *The Beach House*, I found it to be interesting how fast you can read through a book with small chapters. It turned out not to be such a bad idea.

Peter Mullen is found dead at the beach in the Hamptons. The officials in the town are calling it a suicide. However, Jack, the older brother who is studying law, believes it was murder. One, Peter was an expert swimmer and knew the "laws" of the ocean. Two, when Jack saw Peter's body, he was covered in bruises. Three, a competent coroner who did the autopsy confirmed that Peter did not drown.

However, none of the officials agree with Jack and still claim that Peter had committed suicide. Meanwhile, Jack gradually builds up a team of people who agree with the fact that Peter was murdered. Of course, the tide turns and everyone starts to say that Peter suicided. Just who or what has made these people changed their minds?

Jack and a few people (his grandfather, his new girlfriend...) seem to be losing the battle. All seems lost when the court rules Peter's death as suicide. That is when Jack and his people become desperate. They hold their own televised court when they come across some incriminating evidence.

Do the rich really buy their way out of crime? Can they buy "facts" or have them altered and get away with it? Do the rich really control the courts? Jack and his people are rich but they aren't poor. Can they be bought out?

The question is which ruling will the general public and the courts uphold? The original court's ruling or the "kangaroo" court's ruling?

*The Beach House* is an interesting story about how the court and the rich cornering a man when he'll have no choice but to fight back like a feral animal. And when he does, all hell breaks loose.

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Romance meets thriller
Good intentions, but no cigar
These sorts of things should be left in the drawer
worth the wait
a very worthy upper-class murder suspense

The Drowning People
Richard Mason
Manufacturer: Vision
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Us
The Glass Castle : A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards))

ASIN: 0446608009

Amazon.com

"My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success... It was I who killed her." Thus begins the much-hyped first novel by 20-year-old Oxford undergraduate Richard Mason. Your typical murder mystery The Drowning People is not, for we are given the identity of the killer--the who--immediately. The puzzle in this introspective novel is why--why did 70-year-old James Farrell murder his aristocratic wife, Sarah? The answer lies nearly 50 years into the past as the book ranges from Prague to London, from France to a remote castle in Cornwall. At its core is an intoxicating love affair between 22-year-old James, a talented violinist and hopeless romantic, and Ella Harewood, an American heiress to an English title, trapped by her heritage and destiny. A beautifully written exploration of self-absorbed first love and its tragic consequences, The Drowning People soars beyond the highest of expectations placed upon it. --Shannon Bingham, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

So begins The Drowning People, an extraordinary debut novel by a twenty-year-old Oxford student.

When he first lays eyes on her sitting by the Thames, James Farrell, an aspiring violinist, falls instantly in love with Ella Harewood, a young and beautiful society girl engaged to a Cambridge don. Defying the strict social standards of upper-class England, the two carry on a passionate affair, believing that the burning power of their love will justify all their actions, guarantee them a life of happiness, and keep them on top of the world.

But the heady rush of first love threatens to ruin their lives forever. In the ultimate test of loyalty, Ella forces James to violently betray his best friend, and, in doing so, sets off a chain of events that will lead to murder and bitter revenge.

Written with wisdom beyond the author's years, The Drowning People is both a trenchant portrayal of the British upper class and a passionate story about the limits of friendship, the legacy of family, and the volatile power of first love.

"I see her fumble absently in her bag for a cigarette, watch her light it, and follow silver-grey smoke circles upwards to a pale blue sky. The park is noticeably warmer now; people are trickling in, and as they pass they cannot help but look at us, an odd pair under the trees. I can smell the faint odour of sweet perfume and soap and stale cigarette smoke which surrounds her; can hear the click of her lighter flint as she makes a flame; can see, as she holds her cigarette, that one of her nails is bitten to the quick.

"Have you been out here all night?" I ask.

She nods, with a little tightening of pale lips. "Oh yes," she says. "This bench and I are old friends. It's heard more of my secrets than it cares to remember, I suspect."

Customer Reviews:

Romance meets thriller.......2006-03-13

James Farrell, the narrator and main character of this novel, begins by informing the reader that he has just murdered his wife, Sarah, but staged it as a suicide. What follows is James' telling of events that led up to this murder, beginning when he was in his early 20s and met Ella, the love of his life. He finds Ella to be a fun loving free spirit that has subjected herself to her parents expectations, including becoming engaged to the type of man she was "supposed" to marry. James, himself, is fighting his parent's expectations and following his dream of being a famous violinist. James and Ella begin their love affair in secret waiting for Ella to extricate herself from the situation in which she has found herself.

The novel continues with James travelling to Prague with his friend, Eric, to study violin. James learns while he is gone that Ella's family history is coming to haunt her. Her family has a history of mental instabillity amoungst some of the women of the family, and Ella's actions, including breaking off her engagement, appear to others as following in her ancestors' footsteps. The remainder of the novel follows James, Ella, and Eric and their fatal interactions. Also at play are Ella's family, particularly her cousin, Sarah, who has been her life's rival.

What makes this novel great is that the reader is, for the most part, clued in to the truth in advance by the narrator and is usually about a step ahead of the narrative. But despite knowing what is likely coming next, it is the telling of the story that keeps the pages turning. Despite knowing from the beginning that James marries Sarah instead of Ella and knowing that he kills her, the entertainment is in the getting there. The story is strong, the characters intriguing, and the reader wants to know exactly how it all transpires.

Richard Mason has written an impressive debut novel, especially given that he was only 20 at the time of it's writing. It is full of love, tragedy, and excitement. Anyone who has been in love understands the love that James and Ella share. Anyone who has ever been jealous relates to the emotions between the other characters, and anyone who has ever felt loss will be moved by the tragedy that befalls James and those close to him. Highly recommended.

Good intentions, but no cigar.......2005-03-14

The best thing about Richard Mason's debut novel is its deeply macabre plot about upper-class family madness, murderous revenge, and the ruthless insensitivity of young people in love. Taken on its own, it's quite good fun in a gothic, BBC-drama kind of way, and would make a decent movie. You'll work out what's happened well before the final pages, but that doesn't actually spoil things at all - it's entertaining to watch it all unfold like a car accident in slow-motion, and most readers will be happily immersed in it. Mason clearly has a talent for conceiving bizarre revenge plots (as his second and weaker novel, "Us", confirms - not available in the USA, but you can get it from Amazon UK). What he's not so good at (yet) is the actual writing. In "The Drowning People", he seems to have made the fundamental error of wanting us to take the plot seriously; or, rather, choosing such a plot as the basis for a novel which obviously yearns to say something serious about guilt, the dangerous power of first love, and the life-long consequences of youthful selfishness. But it's too convoluted, too B-movie, and too concerned with its own construction to be very effective in that task. The result is that the real "content" of the novel - the ideas about guilt and responsibility - don't emerge from the events. Rather, they're imposed on them. They're constantly re-stated by a narrator who pontificates about Life and all that he has learned from it, which sadly seems to be little more than a raft of platitudes and cliches, delivered in a pompous, finely-cadenced, T.S. Eliotesque tone that irritates more than it convinces. But what else would you expect from an 18-year-old writer with no experience of the kind of life-long perspective he's affecting? It's a classic example of a nervous young author striving to make his point clear and impressive via narrative commentary because he knows it doesn't flow from the action - action which, once again nervously, he's made too flashy, too plot-heavy, to be emotionally engaging in the way it needs to be. If Mason had chosen just one part of this elaborate story - the James-Eric-Ella love triangle, for example, with its hideous "proof of love" pact - and gone deep rather than long, it might have worked. James' pain would have been far more interesting, far more tangible, if he'd really described how it actually felt to a confused 22-year-old rather than just relating it to abstract morality. The familiar lovers'-bargain-with-disastrous-consequences device used in the James-Eric-Ella vignette has long been a powerfully effective one, as in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" and "Wings of the Dove", and could have been given a nice contemporary airing here exploring issues of class, masculinity, sexuality and female power. Alternatively, Mason might have taken Sarah's point of view - for she's actually a much more interesting character than narrator James. But he didn't make these choices. So, in the end, the novel doesn't work beyond the level of "trashy thriller with literary pretensions", neither fish nor fowl, etc.

To observe the difference between this and really good writing, you need only pick up one other novel, published in the same year, which is also about the memory of a juvenile crime and its life-long ramifications: I'm talking about Ian McEwan's "Atonement". It has everything Mason's novel lacks: a simple but compelling plot, credible characters, a subtle use of language, a convincing depiction of several historical periods, a wonderful sense of the passage of time, and a quiet but entirely justified confidence in its own hidden complexities. It's also incredibly moving in a way Mason's novel strives to be but never comes close to achieving. Moreover, the actual telling of the story is not simply an excuse to revel in "the wealth of shameful detail" (p.196), as it sometimes seems to be in Mason's novel despite the narrator's protestations to the contrary. For McEwan, the telling is a vital act emerging from the central character's nature; an imaginative transformation, that is itself a part of the story, and immovably locked into the novel's theme. Read them back to back and you'll see what I mean.

These sorts of things should be left in the drawer.......2005-01-16

Poor Richard Mason. The talent that allows some of his very good writing and the perspicacity that generates amazing wisdom for one one so young, can also produce potential literary disasters. Very few first novels should be let out of the bottom left hand drawer of the battered wooden desk. One should read them every couple of years as a reminder of the necessity of time and time again. As for the results, sorry Kid but Scott Spencer and Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine cornered this market years ago and not on a first time basis.

worth the wait.......2004-08-10

This book was at times slow moving, and the detailed descriptions were often repetative and frustrating. Despite this, I could not stop reading it. The story was haunting, and worth the wait. The slow pace seemed to fit the main character's slow revelation of what had taken place. Although I did figure out the ending before the author gave it away, I don't feel it was too obvious.

a very worthy upper-class murder suspense.......2004-05-24

Over the years I've made the acquaintance of many authors and other people in the book industry, including this author. Richard Mason is a nice, down-to-earth kind of guy who never let his success over the sale of this first novel get to his head. Altogther he got almost a million dollars for "The Drowning People" and reviews compared him to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James, his responses to such exhuberant praise were modest. The comparison to Hugh Grant embarrassed him. In a similarly humble letter I received from him, he pointed out the transcience of literary fame and made me realize that fame is always a fleeting thing.

This novel, begun when he was just 18, is an ambitious, psychologically insightful, suspenseful, romantic, intriguing foray into the inner world of upper-class England. I thought there was a lot of repetitive psychology and needless description and the editors could have cut about a fourth of the book out to give free-er, faster flow to the plot, which would have strengthened the storyline. Yes, may have been a few clumsy or seemingly implausible things in the story, but overall, this was a very good novel. If John Grisham or Michael Creighton had written this book, we would be calling it a very good novel, trust me, but because it was written by this young college kid, automatically any perceived flaws in the work are magnified.

Mason's a very talented author indeed, and his contract is a two-book deal, so I hope his publishers finally put out his second novel. I look forward to it. Some of us have been waiting a very long time.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

World congress on drowning: June 26-28, 2002, Amsterdam. (Rec room).(Brief Article): An article from: Parks & Recreation

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World congress on drowning: June 26-28, 2002, Amsterdam. (Rec room).(Brief Article): An article from: Parks & Recreation

Manufacturer: National Recreation and Park Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Parks & Recreation, published by National Recreation and Park Association on November 1, 2001. The length of the article is 424 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: World congress on drowning: June 26-28, 2002, Amsterdam. (Rec room).(Brief Article)
Publication: Parks & Recreation (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2001
Publisher: National Recreation and Park Association
Volume: 36 Issue: 11 Page: 12(1)

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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The Drowning People
Richard Mason
Manufacturer: Michael Joseph
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HKLD2M

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The Drowning People
Richard Mason
Manufacturer: Michael Joseph
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIP9FY

Recent drownings prompt safety warnings.(Accidents)(A child left unattended in a wading pool dies as do two people who failed to wear life jackets while ... from: The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)

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Recent drownings prompt safety warnings.(Accidents)(A child left unattended in a wading pool dies as do two people who failed to wear life jackets while ... from: The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)

Manufacturer: The Register Guard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0009GH4S6
Release Date: 2005-08-01

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), published by The Register Guard on August 13, 2004. The length of the article is 665 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Recent drownings prompt safety warnings.(Accidents)(A child left unattended in a wading pool dies as do two people who failed to wear life jackets while on area rivers)
Publication: The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) (Newspaper)
Date: August 13, 2004
Publisher: The Register Guard
Page: C1

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Drowning People
Richard Mason
Manufacturer: PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PXRC9E

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Drowning People, The
Richard Mason
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000KZ1FAY

Avoiding drowning & seeing the "me": An essay on old people and loneliness (Canadian Quaker pamphlets)

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Avoiding drowning & seeing the "me": An essay on old people and loneliness (Canadian Quaker pamphlets)
David E. W Holden
Manufacturer: Argenta Friends School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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