Product Description

Frannie O’Neill’s life turned upside down when she and FBI maverick Kit Brennan rescued six incredible children from the school that created them. Now the young flock wants to go back to the couple, and Frannie and Kit are suing for custody. But when the case involves the most extraordinary creatures ever to land on this earth, someone will ensure there is no happy ending. Only Max, the most remarkable of the winged children, knows that another, terrifying biological experiment is taking place in the labs of a brilliant but evil surgeon, Dr Ethan Kane. But to complete his experiment he needs the ultimate prize – Max herself. And as the children dream of returning to the happy safety of the lake house, where for a few precious months they flew free, Kane moves ever closer…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #189391 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Crime Bookseller
‘Compulsive stuff' Crime Bookseller 11/4/03

Review
‘Compulsive stuff’ Crime Bookseller 11/4/03 (Crime Bookseller )

Synopsis
Frannie O'Neill's life turned upside down when she and FBI maverick Kit Brennan rescued six incredible children from the school that created them. Now the young flock wants to go back to the couple, and Frannie and Kit are suing for custody. But when the case involves the most extraordinary creatures ever to land on this earth, someone will ensure there is no happy ending. Only Max, the most remarkable of the winged children, knows that another, terrifying biological experiment is taking place in the labs of a brilliant but evil surgeon, Dr Ethan Kane. But to complete his experiment he needs the ultimate prize - Max herself. And as the children dream of returning to the happy safety of the lake house, where for a few precious months they flew free, Kane moves ever closer...

Customer Reviews

Borrow it from the library if you must
It's taken me more than four years to post a review about THE LAKE HOUSE but for not the best of reasons the memory of it is still clear in my mind. It was my first James Patterson novel and such was its influence that I decided back in 2004 never to read one of his books again - and so far, I haven't. Of course, I have seen films such as Along Came a Spider (based on the Patterson novel of the same title) so I kind of had an idea what he was all about. Well...I was wrong about that, as The Lake House is about as far removed from the crime-fiction mystery thriller genre I usually love as it's possible to get.

The basic premise is unusual, to say the least. It is ostensibly a fairy tale involving a group of fantastical flying children which somehow manages to involve the US Federal Bureau of Investigation together with secret biological experiments. It is such a bizarre mish-mash of ideas that it almost defies any form of description or even opinion, and the age-group of its target audience seems to lurch from one generation to another and back again several times throughout the tale. One minute it feels like a children's story, the next it feels like an FBI thriller suitable for adults. I am of the view, unqualified as I am to judge based on just one book, that James Patterson has gone completely off the rails and writes stories in a week or two, whatever comes into his head. In his early days - the 1970s - he knew how to put a decent story together and by the 1980s he had earned his best-selling status. But I believe he has now published at least 64 books in little more than 30 years, which of course is more than 1 every 6 months, and I am of the further understanding that he is 'assisted' by various other writers in recent times such that a Patterson novel isn't really just a Patterson novel anymore. Maybe The Lake House was the beginning of his decline in credibility; it would not surprise me if someone more familiar with his entire portfolio could confirm this. As it is I personally cannot recommend it, but if you are curious I suggest you minimise your outlay by borrowing it from your local library (sorry Amazon!) - if you really must. If you do get your hands on it you might find yourself laughing at various points throughout the tale - not because anything is actually meant to be funny, but because you won't believe what you've just read.

Suspense and shock are the order of the day, yet again.
Following on from 'When the Wind Blows', 'The Lake House' continues the story of the winged children of the USA, upon whom a number of antagonists take up pursuit. Patterson is maintaining the exploitation of suspense and fear in this work, keeping the shock factor up, and the quality of prose lower than I would desire. However, I am still reading Patterson in my summer vacations, so he's obviously keeping some sort of magnetism on my choice of reads! Recommended.

Not a good read
I have read a good number of books from JP and have enjoyed all them until 'The Lakehouse'. It seemed to be a story written by a child and re-written for adult fiction. The evil scientist, children being chased by everyone who have been genetically crossed with birds and a failed love story that we're not really sure why. Let's stay with Alex Cross and forget this one was ever penned