Fatal: A Novel

Great book! I found Fatal, to be suspenseful, fast-paced and enthralling. The novel shows how one single act can have tremendous and devastating consequences. The book is filled with compelling twists and turns, which kept me guessing until the very end. A definite page turner that kept me guessing until the end. This is the first book I have read by Lescroart, but it will definitely not be my last. If you like fast-pace and clever thrillers, you will enjoy this book.

A HUGE, thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an ARC of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Wow... a couple surprises in there.. for a time I was convinced that the big surprise was that a certain character 'did it'... (avoiding spoilers).. and instead... well, it was a different surprise.
Great story.

Unfortunately, the story line in this novel reflects our current societal mores exactly. Interesting character development and plot. It became a little over-long and wordy and could have ended sooner with the same result.

What started out as a fairly intriguing murder mystery and well-developed characters turned into a hot mess. Although the reader certainly knows more about the killer than the police do as the story progresses and thus the identity was somewhat easy to identify, investigator Beth Tully was really frustratingly sloppy in her detective work. The blah ending was annoying.

I enjoyed reading the book until the very end. The story moved along quickly--- there were deception, adultery, terrorism, murder, etc. There were also the obligatory swerves and surprises that a good crime fiction novel should have. I was disappointed in how the story ended. I had an open mind as to who the murderer or murderers would be. But the resolution of the book left me cold. The story mirrored the ones from crime series that one sees on TV.

I read the book based on some good buzz and previews. The murder investigation fumbled along a bit too long for my taste and interest. Just not my cup of tea…

Pretty clever mystery; good but not great!

Kate Jameson tells Beth, her police detective friend, about meeting Peter Ash at a dinner party. Despite her insistence that she is happily married, she remains obsessed with Peter and finally seduces him; having satisfied her obsession, she blithely returns to her married life . . . but Peter, a willing participant in her seduction, isn’t particularly content with seeing Kate just once.An unforeseen terrorist attack sidelines Kate and Beth while Peter considers how to convince Kate to meet him again.And then he turns up dead . . . .Complex characters drive this tale of seduction and murder and, although they are not all likeable, they are all completely believable. Spinning out deception and unintended consequences, this dark yet satisfying tale is one readers are likely to find mesmerizing.Recommended.

Fatal by John LescroatStandalone3.5 StarsFrom The Book:Kate loves her life. At forty-four, she’s happily married to her kind husband, Ron, blessed with two wonderful children, and has a beautiful home in San Francisco. Everything changes, however, when she and Ron attend a dinner party and meet another couple, Peter and Jill. Kate and Peter only exchange a few pleasant words but that night, in bed with her husband, Kate is suddenly overcome with a burning desire for Peter. What begins as an innocent crush soon develops into a dangerous obsession and Kate’s fixation on Peter results in one intense, passionate encounter between the two. Confident that her life can now go back to normal, Kate never considers that Peter may not be so willing to move on.Not long after their affair, a masked man barges into the café Kate is sitting in with her best friend, firing an assault weapon indiscriminately into the crowd. This tragedy is the first in a series of horrifying events that will show Kate just how grave the consequences of one mistake can be.My Thoughts:John Lescroart is an excellent writer and his courtroom series with Diz and Abe is one of the best to come off the press. While this one had good characters it somehow missed the mark in the plot department. Nothing that Peter...the dead guy...did to become dead... made any sense what so ever. Why would a successful attorney jeopardize his entire life as he knows it to have a two hour fling with a woman he barely knows, and why would he change his personality so drastically because of it? I'm sure it probably could and does happen but the reader is left in limbo. It's never successfully explained enough for the reader to buy into it. Please stick with what you do best Mr. Lescourt.

REVIEW: It was difficult for me to like this book since it showed us the worst in the human animal, but I did end up reading the entire book. I do admit to skipping and skimming parts since there had been so much redundancy. I don’t know if it was the authors intention to write the characters as flat, unlikable, bleak and uninteresting as he did or to fill the gaps of the story with so much trivia and description about San Francisco, but this for me did not a good read make.It was an interesting piece for showing that no matter how small our actions are (and this one was a doozy!) our choices affect so many around us. The ripple affect I imagine.Unfortunately, there was less that I liked about this book than what made this a boring read.The conclusion was not quite the shock to me that I imagine the author wanted it to be. That does not mean that I figured it out early on -I did not-it is just that by the time I got to the end I just didn’t care. The characters were just that uninteresting.The author did add things that, in my mind had been totally unnecessary -why add the part of the terrorist attack and what about the anorexic and Ginny?It almost felt to me that this book was written in the 70’s and then edited it to bring it up to date and the parts never meshed.*ARC supplied by publisher

Kate and her husband Ron, have a seemingly perfect life: happily married, two kids, etc. So Kate is thrown off by her attraction to another man, Peter Ash, when she meets him at a dinner party held by one of Ron's colleagues and his own wife. Peter himself is married, with twin sons. Unable to get Peter out her mind, Kate ignores the warnings of her friend Beth, and arranges an encounter. Shortly after that event, Kate and Beth are involved in a horrific terrorist attack, and it seems like nothing will ever be the same.

This was a slightly bizarre novel with an interesting premise: a sort of anti-adultery treatise, in a way. The novel confounded me slightly with its two different tracks: one of personal angst and murder (I don't think it's a spoiler to state that shortly after the terrorist attack, Peter Ash winds up murdered) and then the terrorist attack, which seems somewhat oddly inserted into the novel's plot. Kate's friend Beth is a police detective, and for me, Beth was driving force of the book (and seriously, practically the only sane person in this story). I enjoyed her character and while it's been noted that this was a standalone novel for Lescroart, I could see another book featuring her.

Beth is perplexed as she tries to solve Peter Ash's murder. For us: not really. I felt as if the suspect was fairly easily identifiable the whole time. Lescroart did a fairly good job as casting suspicions on someone else; at one point, I finally thought, oh, ok, maybe I really am wrong (but I wasn't). There's a whole host of characters in the novel and they are interesting, but not really as complex or intricate as Beth. Overall, I enjoyed this novel-- I haven't read anything by Lescroart since some of his early Dismas Hardy books ages ago-- but I didn't find it to have an amazing "wow" factor or anything. It was an interesting, if somewhat predictable thriller, with some strange plot points thrown in.

I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley and the publisher (thank you!) in return for an unbiased review; it is available everywhere as of 01/24/2017.

A great book by a talented writer! As much as I enjoyed the book, the ending was unfortunately completely predictable from the first chapter and yet still managed to feel a bit far-fetched and out-of-character for the perpetrators given what we knew about them. That being said, the terrific writing style and likability of the characters completely made up for the book's shortcomings . It was hard not to fall in love with Beth and Ike thanks to their witty banter despite their highly stressful jobs. The Laurie/Ginny side story was also heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I'd definitely read other books from this author.