Product Description

The first novel in the Women's Murder Club series.
 
As the only woman homicide inspector in San Francisco, Lindsay Boxer has to be tough. But nothing she has seen prepares her for the horror of the honeymoon murders, when a brutal maniac begins viciously slaughtering newly wed couples on their wedding nights. Lindsay is sickened by the deaths, but her determination to bring the murderer to justice is threatened by her own personal tragedy.
 
So she turns to Claire, a leading coroner, Cindy, a journalist and Jill, a top attorney, for help with both her crises, and the Women’s Murder Club is born.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3132 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
James Patterson inaugurates a new crime series with the impressively complex First to Die: the Women's Murder Club, a group of San Francisco professionals--a homicide cop, an assistant district attorney, a pathologist and a reporter--share their information and thinking on cases. Someone is killing honeymoon couples on their first night together and nothing that we know about the killer is, we realise, entirely reliable: the connections between the victims are tenuous and the killer's method varies significantly. Intelligent, sensitive, tough cop Lindsay Boxer has problems of her own--a potentially fatal blood condition and a suspicion that she is falling for the intelligent divorced spin-doctor forced on her as partner by a publicity-conscious city government. The conversations she has with her friends are partly a matter of looking again at the results of legwork--sometimes explaining something to people who do not share your automatic assumptions makes you look at it again--and partly a matter of sharing expertise; rapidly they realise that they are up against someone for whom murder is a sexual game. Patterson has always had an eye for the psychology of killers--here he adds empathy for those to whom caring about victims is a way of life. --Roz Kaveney

About the Author
James Patterson is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade: the Women's Murder Club, the Alex Cross novels and Maximum Ride, and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. He has won an Edgar Award, the mystery world's highest honour. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.

Customer Reviews

Better than Cross
I read a few Alex Cross novels and thought they were "OK" nothing special not particularly gripping but solid enough reads.

When Patterson then started this new series starting with 1st to die i thought perhaps he might be clutching at straws.

However i was wrong 1st to die is an absolute stunning read from cover to cover i read it within a day i was that hooked on it.

The reason being i was hooked is because it is so fast paced so many twists all the way through the book just keep you hooked on the book.

Recommend it to everyone a truely stunning read.

Another gripping story .....
As a regular reader of James Patterson, I eagerly awaited the first instalment of his new set of characters "The Women's Murder Club" in 1st to Die.
From the moment I began reading I was gripped, and I knew that I had to read to the very end that same day to find out who did it!
Although this book is probably not my favourite of his novels, I enjoyed the new characters and the plot kept me going.
The quick chapter writing style of James Patterson is again present, which makes it an easy read, good for train journeys into work.

Dark Exploration of the Creative Psyche
Summary: Those who enjoy stories where the process of creation is explored will find this book fascinating. Those who like the idea of women across professions teaming up to overcome killers will be enthused by this work. On the other hand, the brutal and demeaning scenes in this book are tough to handle and will turn off those who love locked room mysteries written by English authors. The book's concept of having a reporter as part of an unofficial sleuthing team is not really credible to me, so I graded the book down one star.

Review: Ms. Lindsay Boxer is the heroine of this story. She is a homicide inspector for the San Francisco police department. A horrific murder in the honeymoon suite at one of the city's finest hotels brings a high profile case, and a new partner whose expertise is in media relations. The main plot revolves around finding a serial killer whose focus is just-married couples. Three interesting subplots revolve around the formation of the Women's Murder Club (invoving Ms. Boxer, Claire Washburn who is a medical examiner, Cindy Thomas who has just been promoted to the crime desk at the San Francisco Chronicle, and Jill Bernhardt who is an assistant D.A.), Ms. Boxer's encounter with an often fatal disease, and her romantic involvement with her new partner, Chris Raleigh.

The crime sequences are told from the perspective of the murderer, which gives the reader an advanced idea of who the murderer is. The clues are many and generous, and most people should have no trouble spotting who did it and why by three quarters of the way through the book. Do realize that there are plenty of red herrings that will make it hard to figure out who the murderer is at first.

The writing, plotting, and pace are all well done. You will find Lindsay Boxer appealing and interesting as a heroine, and will want to get to know her better.

This book begins a series which will feature the Women's Murder Club, so you can expect to get to read about her again in the future. If Mr. Patterson had left Cindy Thomas out of the club, I would have felt this was a five-star book. He could still have used this character for sleuthing by creating informal contacts with Inspector Boxer. I am surprised to see such a loose thread left untied. I simply find it unbelievable that a homicide inspector and an assistant D.A. would tell any reporter anything they didn't have to, no matter how nice, dependable, or helpful the reporter was. Perhaps this point will be remedied in future books.

After you finish this story, I suggest you think about how trying things out can stimulate your creative mind to find solutions. For example, if you need to find ways to increase your income, you might try different ways of earning a living on a part-time basis to see which of them mesh with your interests, talents and energies. If you would like to get better investing results, try running a paper portfolio to compete with your current approach. When you are done, your mind will trigger new and improved thoughts that you would not otherwise have had.

Get down to the kernel of the issue by immersing yourself in the situation!